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To: John Mansfield who wrote (16941)	5/14/1998 3:40:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 31646

[MEDICAL] 'Hospitals could face Y2K chaos By Beverley Head One of the world's biggest suppliers of medical equipment has predicted utter chaos over the situation most Australian hospitals will face in 19 months' time as a result of the millennium bug. Hewlett-Packard, which has about 60 per cent of the Australian market for patient-monitoring systems, medical imaging and clinical-information systems, admits some of its equipment won't work without a fix. Next month, the company plans to unveil a web site listing which HP equipment is Y2K compliant; which has, or will have, a fix available; and which equipment simply won't work when the date rolls over. Systems purchased as recently as 1995 could fall into the last latter category. Already the Gartner Group of analysts has warned that at least 10 per cent of mission-critical systems in health-care organisations will fail because of non-compliance with Y2K. Hospitals' relatively slow action on the Y2K issue is partly to blame, but the high penetration of embedded controller chips, which may contain a date field, poses a significant problem for health-care organisations. Mr Chris Mollo, country support manager of HP Medical Products Group, said yesterday: "I expect there will be utter chaos with equipment tagged and deemed unsafe". He said that might prompt "some hospital consolidation, which might force them to be more efficient". HP plans in October to send an information pack to the 900 Australian hospitals it supplies. In the meantime, Mr Mollo recommends "every hospital should have a small team to list all the equipment which might generate a date, then work with the original equipment manufacturer to determine is the product compliant, what plans does the [manufacturer] have for the equipment and how might they dispose of faulty equipment in time?" Mr Mollo said suppliers should also consider developing financing packages -- such as lease or rental agreements -- to help cash-strapped hospitals replace outdated equipment as soon as possible. HP admits to three categories of equipment. The first comprises those systems which HP is selling now -- which the company says are either Y2K compliant or will be by the end of this year, using free updates. ... afr.com.au