TOR103: OpenQRS with Kate Michi Ettinger

How much time did you spend wondering about the potential quality of the last medical procedure you were involved with? More specifically, did you spend a lot of time consternating about whether or not the tools being used in the procedure (either by you or the medical professionals you were with) were reliable and safe?

This is an intriguing question for many of us. For example, I was born in the United States, but I have lived outside the US for the last 11 years and I spend a good deal of my time in parts of the world that do not have running water, reliable power or iron clad hygiene practices. When I consider the question of reliability and safety while wearing each of those three hats, I come up with very different answers, as I'm willing to bet, so would many of you.

This is a question that has plagued Kate Michi Ettinger since 2010, and, as our guest today for the 103rd episode of Terms of Reference, I talk with Kate about OpenQRS - an organization she founded to the issue. Kate is a social innovation consultant, product designer and health care ethicist. She is trained in law, bioethics and conflict resolution and has over fifteen years of health-related experience in private, government, academic, non-profit sectors. The "QRS" in OpenQRS, as you might guess, stands for quality, reliability and safety. As the catalyst for OpenQRS, Kate currently focuses on how to harness new technologies, such as sensors, wireless, mobile – to make it easy, effective and affordable to monitor data on quality, reliability and safety for medical devices deployed anywhere in the world.