The robot pharmacist

If you want to understand the complexities and pitfalls of automating medicine (and professional work in general), please read Bob Wachter’s story, adapted from his new book The Digital Doctor, of how Pablo Garcia, a 16-year-old patient at the University of California’s San Francisco Medical Center, came to be given a dose of 38 antibiotic pills rather than the single pill he should have been given. (Part 1, part 2, part 3; part 4 will appear tomorrow.)Pretty much every problem with computer...