How to Build Safer and More Reliable Software
This article originally appeared in BuiltIn on June 14, 2023.
Innovative software continues to disrupt society as we know it, including solving big problems, squeezing out new efficiencies and creating a better quality of life.
More and more major businesses and industries are run on software, from movies to agriculture to national defense. Healthcare also benefits from software-fueled mobile and AI technologies to accelerate innovations and address growing physician and other healthcare staffing shortages.
Yet bad software can cause irreparable harm across the very industries and infrastructure it’s transforming. McKinsey estimates that 70 percent of medical device recalls are due to a software issue.
The cost of software recalls can be significant in terms of financial losses and damage to a company’s reputation, and can also cause physical harm and even death. Some recent examples include:
- An automaker’s recall of more than 360,000 vehicles in February stemmed from issues with the company’s self-driving auto software.
- An airline’s December 2022 meltdown that left tens of thousands of stranded travelers was largely due to a legacy enterprise software system from the 1990s.
- Medical device recalls in 2020 alone ranged from insulin pumps to software-operated devices responsible for monitoring heart and brain activity.
