Maintenance of IT Systems at the Upshire Hospital Trust - Essay Example

Medical Ethics The Upshire Hospital Trust has employed me to look after their systems as a qualified IT professional. The hospital believed in me and other three people so that it can get its IT equipments maintained in proper manner. We are supposed to maintain not only computer systems but also very critical electronic equipments being used as life saving devices. The given condition is that one of the very important electronic equipment used in ICU is malfunctioning. The problem is basically a software error. Now these problems are generally tackled for my colleague and it is he who has actually developed that program. But in the given condition, it is only me who is available to sort out these problems. Since the problem is very critical, it may cause loss of life if not sorted early. Now since I am well qualified and is aware of the technique involving the creation of the problem, it is my moral as well legal responsibility to make an attempt to solve it. Currently there are two parties involved. First one is the hospital and the next one is me. Any death caused due to the above mentioned problem will be regarded as a matter of negligence with responsibility being shared by the hospital and the person responsible for maintenance. The hospital has failed in obtaining an emergency kit which can be used in case of any technical problem. No electronic device can be considered for life time and must not be expected to perform throughout without any problem related to hardware as well as software (Ackers, 2005). Despite knowing the utility and need of the IT officers, the hospital has also failed in maintaining the proper number of the same so that whole functioning of the equipments can be achieved without a glitch. So the hospital can charged for going for cost cutting through less hiring of the people required for maintaining necessary elements so that proper functioning of the emergency services like the ICU can be maintained. Since almost whole of the IT department is not in the hospital and this clearly shows that this division is not considered as an essential service by the hospital and hence the whole policy of the hospital and its commitment towards the modern medical techniques and devices can be questioned. The hospital can be charged on the ground of lapses which may finally risk the patient's life and any casualty will be considered as a consequence of negligence on the side of hospital. And since currently only I am available, so it's going to be me who will finally be penalized by the hospital and there is a possibility of getting accused in the case. Being an IT professional, I will try my best to sort out the problem in the quickest possible time. But at the same time, I will suggest the authorities to hire more professionals so that any situation like the one mentioned here can be averted. Since most of the programs are meant for live saving equipments so there should be at a group of developers for developing, maintaining and handling of the system and at least one of them must be available at any given time (Bott, 2005). In the given case study there is just one person who was involved in the development process and he was not present when the problem raised its ugly head. The development of software is generally done in different phases with proper documentation each of the phases must be done and properly stored. The development of each of the phase should be followed with a very precise software testing techniques. The same process should again be repeated once the whole software has been developed. But still none of us can say the software developed is error free. There is a possibility of it not performing according to expected outcomes because of hardware delay or any other complexity. So the complete set of hardware with the software must be tested live with output being properly monitored. The hospital must have at least a pair of each of the device with one being maintained for emergent conditions. Moving on to software development processes, the software must be developed according to the concepts of software engineer. Since most of the devices are actually real time systems, the time complexity should be kept very low. Apart from these a list of possible problems can be maintained with patches of every possible problem. Proper up gradation of the software and inspection of the same must be done to ensure error free functioning. Website Copyright Teachers, Students and Institutions can use copyrighted material from the internet but with some restrictions. The first thing they should to do is to make sure whether the material has been put on the Internet legally. Internet is in current condition has become a repository of illegally stored copyright material comprising mainly of music, film, text, software, images and so on i.e., they have been uploaded without the permission from the copyright owners. And hence any further use of this material will also be termed as illegal. If the websites on the net uses only copyright material then the same generally notifies that these materials have been put on with the permission of those who own the copyright. The copyright notice on the site also tells us exactly what one can do with the material. Even in case of not agreeing with the copyright clauses, one must have to certain things with the material that fall within one or more of the exceptions to copyright. The Intellectual property right in UK has many provisions of penalty for violators. The penalty for a copyrighted material depends on the type of infringement. There are separate laws for infringement occurred online and physical. Hosting a website by an academic institution with copyrighted materials will fall under the category of online infringement with reason being other than business but prejudicially affecting the right holder. The website creation will be considered as an act of communicating the work to the public. The maximum penalty in this case is the two years imprisonment or a level five fine. Normally infringement of Copyright law involves both civil and criminal law. In the case study, it's an educational institution which is the culprit so the infringement could lead to a civil action and financial penalties with the maximum chances would be the accused losing the case( IP, 2002). If it is found that that the offence is more serious and is actually an organized form of copying and distribution is being carried out such as the mass copying of image and audio files especially for profit and advertisement, then this is likely to invite criminal enforcement. These outcomes might not appear to be a very harmful one but the actual loss will be that of reputation. The institute and its students could suffer from the bad publicity. Many people who have put their own copyright material on the Internet normally do so in such a way that they are very much aware of the fact that the act of copying will happen even if they do not specifically say that downloading the same is allowed. It's up to the institution to decide whether any particular material has been covered by an implied license but the same argument cannot work for materials uploaded on the net illegally. The material uploaded on the internet can be used to find information with the intention of generating new ideas and material and the same can be claimed for a copyright (Oppenhum, 1998). Being a responsible IT professional and a very part of IT support of the school. I would recommend the institution to avoid any use of copyrighted material on its website. The authorities will be duly informed of the fact that these photographs come under the purview of Intellectual Property Act of The United Kingdom and any violations in this regard will be considered similar to the one that will fall under the category of online infringement and will be dealt according to the clauses given in the law. Most of the materials are either free or available through license agreement detail about which is be displayed along with the description of the use that the materials may be put to, on the authority of the right holders. If there is no license statement with the materials then it is to be assumed that they are fully protected by copyright law and our use of the same should also be governed by the clauses given along with the statement. So if there is a license agreement is there then the user should read the same carefully and comply with it. Just because someone has published its creation on the internet, it does not mean that they do not have any copyright or moral right over it. One must not misunderstand as a open creation. It musty not be downloaded, changed and republished on other website. Linking of the material of the website to web based resources should also be according to the some established protocol (Cassy, 2004). The linking is mostly being done through bypassing the home page of the website that the author intended the users to access first. This act may offend the author or creator and might be seen as an adaptation of the web site and is restricted act under copyright law. The best way is to link to the home page and give the path from there. Other process of getting the permission from the rights owner so that the required page can be deep linked. Similarly the use of 'frames' in a web site to display other websites' content may also infringe the copy right and moral rights. The involved person or institution can be charged with offences like reproducing without permission and denying the integrity as well as paternity right of the author by making as a part of your site and passing off the same as your own creation(Cassy, 2004) Staff misusing company resources The case study gives details of use of pornographic material through office computer network while using internet by the employees of the retail chain during non office hours. The mails which the employees share and send generally contain sexually explicit jokes and photographs. They also surf websites which contain pornographic material. In United Kingdom, there is UK obscenity legislation to deal with the specific problem of online pornography. The enforcement of this law is a great difficulty because of limitless concept of internet having no borders. The staff involved in the crime of sharing, transferring and displaying these materials will be charged under section 1(1) of the Obscene Publication Act 1959 (Anderson,1971). According to this act "an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it (Anderson, 1971)" Now these people generally transfer electronically from one computer to another using telephone lines and modems or cable based broadband. They will again be charged with Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which also covers the electronic transmission of pornographic material. Since the pornographic materials have been attached to an e-mail, this electronic transmission will be considered as a publication under this act (Akdeniz, 1996). Being an IT professional and a law abiding citizen, my first duty is to inform the senior authorities about this behavior of employees and then make arrangements so that office LAN could never be used be used for accessing pornographic material. An electronic log book of each and every employee will now being maintained so that the list of sites surfed by the employees can be monitored and the name of those who surf pornographic sites should be forwarded to senior authorities. Since, the pornography on the Internet is available in different formats; the need of the hour is to block all sites which contain the contents of this type (Edwards & Charlotte, 1997). These materials are available in form of pictures and short animated movies, to sound files and stories and are easily accessible through World Wide Web. Since this internet is a complex and multi-national environment, so there cannot be just a single solution to the regulation of illegal and harmful content. One of the many possible solutions is to create a firewall with the very broad list of sites which contain pornographic materiall. The search engines should be operated only in moderated mode. And the most effective of the all is to use software at the gateway with the capability to thorough search of some meta-tags in those sites. If any of the meta-tag is found in the site, the user will then not be allowed to surf that site. This technique will certainly be detrimental in the use of office computers for pornographic materials. Reference Akers, N.(2005) Patent Laws and Practice in Medical Devices, www.pjbpubs.com/uploads/downloads/writtencourses/SP_Law_Practice_Medical %20Devices.pdf Bott, F. (2005) Professional Issues in Information Technology. British Computer Society Can teachers or students use copyright material from the Internet, (2002) http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/faq/education/teachers.htm Oppenhum, C. (1998) Intellectual Property http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/copyright/session1/ Anderson, R. V. (1971) "This legal definition of obscene is narrower than the ordinary meaning of obscene which is filthy, lewd or disgusting". Akdeniz, Y. (1996) "Computer Pornography: A Comparative Study of the US and UK Obscenity Laws and Child Pornography Laws in Relation to the Internet", International Review of Law, Computers & Technology Edwards, L. & Charlotte, W. (1997). "Law and the Internet: Regulating Cyberspace" Hart Publishing. http://www.cyber-rights.org/reports/governan.htm Cassy, J. (2004) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Networked e-Learning http://www.stir.ac.uk/departments/daice/l2l/ Read More