New daylight time may mess up medical devices, authorities say

[tuvor]

The lengthening of daylight time may trigger malfunctions with medical devices and hospital information systems, Health Canada warned Wednesday.

The department disseminated advisories from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration aimed at hospital officials, health-care workers, people reliant on medical devices as well as their caregivers.

The advisories warned that this weekend's early start to daylight time could lead to unpredictable problems with critical medical machinery.

"The extent and seriousness of this problem is unclear," the warning to individuals states. "We do not know if any medical equipment will be affected, how it will be affected or how it may affect patients.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/03/07/time-change.html

[aquart]

1. Another idiot BushCo bill. REPEAL THEM ALL.

[bbinacan]

6. Oh Bullshit

I love DST. If it saves energy, fine. If it doesn't, I still like the extra daytime.

[ShockediSay]

13. Who knows? Maybe Cheney's pacemaker will

run atwitter

[AngryAmish]

23. DST is awesome

Next week it will be in the 60s here and with it being light out until 7 pm it means the golf season has begun! Joy!

[Cha]

2. I hope not. This early daylight savings is

suppose to help with fuel bills? That's real nice of Congress.

[RC]

3. Yeah, like y2k. Planes falling out of the sky, coffee pots malfunctioning,

More bullshit for the ignorant.

[bbinacan]

5. Agreed

I love DST.

[iamjoy]

10. I HATE DST

I am not a morning person - OK?
So, having to get up when it's dark out is really annoying. I don't care if it stays light out later - I need the morning sun to wake up.

[bbinacan]

11. I'm not a morning person

as well. That's why I prefer longer daylight at night.

[hobbit709]

4. Why does this remind me of the Y2K panic

[NMMNG]

7. There was some concern about this problem with something my grandfather has

The nurse had been trying to reprogram it to avoid a problem when the DST change goes through. Fortunately it's not a critical life-support piece of machinery but it's worrisome to think what might happen if this becomes an issue with such things.

[maseman]

8. Actually there are problems with the change

All of our meetings in our Outlook in my company are reading an hour off for next week. OK, so it is just a stupid electronic calender, but if other computer equipment cannot figure it out then that could mean trouble. I don't care though. It will be 2AM on Saturday night. I on't be flying until Monday afternoon.

I like DST also. Nice to have some sun until 8PM since I usually work to about 6 or 6:30 everyday.

[NMMNG]

9. My grandfather already had problems with the equipment

It's a system that records his vital signs and responses to several questions every day at a pre-designated time. The nurse re-set it for 11am anticipating DST and the next day it did it's thing at 11, but the following day it went off at 10am again. :shrug:

[Hekate]

12. Political decisions made by technological illiterates -- gah

It doesn't matter in my little home computing system, but it will matter to all kinds of time/date sensitive operations. Even something as simple as a "return by date of xx-xx-xx or suffer great penalties" situation may be affected by an electronic date-stamp being wrong.

So, because of a thoughtless decision in Washington DC, techies all over the country are scrambling to make sure that programs in their businesses reflect the new reality, because an automatic system change has been rendered inoperative.

Hekate

[nodehopper]

14. I don't understand--is something different this year?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. Daylight savings time is starting earlier...

we lose an hour on Saturday night. :(

[nodehopper]

18. but why would that cause a problem with machines

if they go through daylight savings twice a year every year?

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Because they are preprogrammed to make the change based on the old rules.

Since DST starts three weeks earlier this year, many devices will be off by an hour for that period unless manually adjusted.

[nodehopper]

21. ooooh ok I see

[area51]

16. DST needs to DIAF. (n/t)

[LittleWoman]

17. Extending Daylight Saving Time avoids doing something real

to cut energy use. The extension was buried in a bill passed by the 2005 Republican Congress. There is no proof that extending DST will save anything, but it is easier to do that than to do something to cut energy use which might cause some inconvenience to the big Repub donors.

In fact this extension has caused more problems than one might realize and cost more money in terms of time spent by the tech people on this nonsense instead of their regular work. My son is a sys administrator and he has had to spend a great deal of time on this for the past month or more. I am sure this has been repeated in businesses, hospitals etc all over the country. The problem is not going on DST per se because the US has done that for years, but rather changing the onset date from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March. Also we will be going off DST on a different date as well. Everything for years has been programmed to go on DST on this date and off on the last Sunday in October. With the change everything must be reprogrammed for the new dates and if that is no enough these dates may be changed next year as well.

For the record I hate DST because I have to get the bus to work at 7 am and I do not like having to walk to the bus stop in the dark. I live in a safe neighborhood, but it is still a problem crossing some streets because drivers either do not see pedestrians in the dark or they ignore them. Others who have to get the bus early in the morning do not live in such a safe area so they face a double risk.

There is a really great web site from the Naval Observatory which allows the user to find out the time of sunrise and sunset in any location in the US and some outside the US as well as other interesting information <http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html> I went on this site and for Columbus, OH the sunrise on December 22, 2006 (winter solstice) was 7:51am and for March 11, 2007 (first day of DST) is 7:50. I do not think we have gained much for the trouble and expense involved in changing the onset of DST.

[moroni]

19. Medical Equipment, etc

You are correct. Medical imaging servers that communicate and transmit images need to be on the same time so they can be "sync'd". We will have to work changing the clocks on life giving equipment to insure that the correct time is available for recording emergent issues. Software upgrades or patches are not available all the time as this involves changes to medical equipment software (even Microsoft operating systems) and changes sometimes need to be cleared/approved through the FDA. If folks keep up with the changes on their home computers, Microsoft has already made the DST patch available and it can be downloaded manually (if you don't already have it done automatically) so your home computer can change to the new time when it happens. Television stations and a variety of other communications entities are already prepared for this. Just another small bump in the road.

Take a flashlight if you have trouble navigating to the bus stop. Wear reflective clothing if you feel drivers cannot see you. If your children have to walk in the dark, walk with them or give them little navigation lights (LED lights). They are cheap and easy to purchase (Wally World, etc).

Blessings to all,
moroni

[Retrograde]

26. Amen, sister

Why do something hard like tighten up gas milage requirements or encourage use of energy-efficient appliances when an empty gesture can be made?

[yurbud]

22. and Cheney may accidentally emerge from his bunker before the sun sets and burst into flames

[Delphinus]

24. Does anyone care that it

messes up my body? My life?

Piss on all the lawmakers who passed this law.

[Thor_MN]

25. Medical devices need to work 24/7/365. Createing in a dependancy on absolute time would be idiotic

It would be insane to have any critical feature of a medical device care what time it is. It has to work during the next hour the same as the last regardless if it is 1AM or 2AM. It would be a criminally poor design for it to stop functioning because the "time" changed.

[Lurking Dem]

27. It's already screwing up

computerized tide tables and other marine nav software.

It's a nightmare.

[FlaGranny]

28. They tried this more than 30 years ago

and gave up on it. There were so many kids hit by cars on their way to school that there was an uproar and they changed it back. It's not a bright move to have kids horsing around waiting for a bus or crossing the street before daylight.

[Raine]

30. I remember that too

it was a disaster, it seems that no one learns from mistakes of the past.

[benld74]

29. EARLY DST

To save fuel money is like putting a bandaid on an sliced artery for a repair