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Learning from mistakes
Thomas Edison supposedly said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Medical device designers should take Edison’s words to heart. The industry has a passion for innovation, and for a good reason – to save and improve the lives of all humanity.
While exploring why a promising, innovative or even possibly disruptive device failed may be a difficult topic to explore, it can yield valuable information to avoid those same pitfalls.
“I think one of the big takeaways is, when we see other companies struggling, we shouldn’t applaud that,” Amor said “We should really say, ‘How can we prevent ourselves from going through those same issues?’”
If the industry wants to succeed at improving and saving lives, we all need to look at our failures and understand how to keep history from repeating itself.
There are very few ideas so good that they can survive being poorly executed. In addition there are a whole lot of folks who can speak very convincingly while being quite devoid of correct information.
Given that combination it is quite possible to launch a terrible disaster.
The basic concept behind Theranos looks like a great idea, and possibly it could still be a great product if no mistakes or shortcuts led the development astray. OR the reputation may be so very damaged that it will not ever happen. I don’t have enough data to say.
Given the reliability of computer controls and common operating systems who, being aware of that track record, would possibly trust a computerized anesthesiologist. Certainly not this experienced engineer.
It is certainly useful to be able to learn from the errors of others without having to suffer the same pain as they did. It is not a “finger pointing” thing to choose to study what went wrong, it is, much rather, an attempt at “learning from history”, since those who don’t learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them again.
Thanks, William! Those are really good points. Hope you found the article useful.