New York patients who are scheduled to have a surgery that uses computers to assist in the procedure may be interested to learn that in February, a patient’s heart surgery was stopped for five minutes when a computer began doing an automatic virus check. Although the patient, who was sedated at the time, was not harmed, the incident does highlight the vulnerability of such systems to errors that could potentially be life-threatening.

In this case, the error occurred because the anti-virus software was set up improperly. Guidelines were to configure the software so that patient data file and medical images were not scanned. Instead, the software was scanning the entire system hourly. As a result, the system crashed, and surgeons had to reboot in the middle of surgery.

Although this was a mistake, there are other cases in which hackers have deliberately attacked hospital computers and demanded a ransom. This occurred at a California hospital in March. The hospital eventually paid a ransom of $17,000 although that fell well short of the $3.5 billion in bitcoin initially demanded. Staff at another health care provider could not look up patient appointments, access records or even check their email when they faced an attack in April.

People may think of medical errors as incidents such as pre-operative care errors or medication errors, but a software mistake can also be a kind of medical error. Whether due to a computer that malfunctions as a result of the wrong information from humans as was the case with the computer that failed during heart surgery or a medical error that arises from a more conventional mistake or a wrong diagnosis, these errors can be devastating. They may impede or even destroy a patient’s chance for recovery, and having legal assistance may be advisable if compensation is sought for the losses that have been incurred.