Ventilator Failure
A 15 year old Boston teen was killed recently when a power outage caused his ventilator to fail, prompting an investigation into the failure. In an interesting move, the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk county district attorney’s office decided to turn the ventilator over to the manufacturer to be examined. The particular ventilator fell in a serial number batch that was known for having back up battery issues. The district attorney’s office defended their decision:
Josh Wall, first assistant district attorney, said police and prosecutors gave the device to the company so trained engineers at Pulmonetic could confirm that the ventilator shut off during the power outage, and determine why.
Police have said their preliminary investigation indicates the backup battery to the ventilator failed during a two-hour power outage Friday morning.
Wall said the engineers could retrieve the information without disassembling the device, which he described as a sort of "black box" that may have recorded any alarm that went off. The company will videotape the retrieval of the data, Wall said.
"The company does have experience in obtaining this information," he said. "We have no reason to think that the company is interested in committing a crime in obstructing justice. If we had reason to think that the company would expose itself criminally to protect itself civilly we would not have taken this action."
The ventilator company is awaiting a videographer to arrive at their corporate headquarters to document the investigation of the machine.