Were I A Betting Man, I'd Bet Baxter Is Minimizing The Actual Risks AWS Is Agreeing To Assume Here: US Patient Fatalities From Outages Or Errors...

For reasons largely unknown, the old power alley topics reached out to chant my name, in an echo. . . this very afternoon. Eight or even nine years on, still there. . . .

So it is, that I offer this series of. . . um, observations.

Mr. José E. Almeida (Baxter's CEO) is a fine man. Candid, forthright and ethical. But (as is true at many multinationals) many of the same people work under him, as ever did. And they will. . . scratch and claw.

I can say Amazon is a great company, operationally -- but in the rush for new IT systems business / cloud support gigs. . . I wonder whether Amazon's AWS is being sold "a pig in a poke". That is, Baxter is legendary for excellent inter-company marketing / happy talk, about patient systems (having gilded this same lily three decades ago -- with big iron, at old IBM -- page 63 of ARS). . . only to leave its "partner" (then IBM) holding the bag for product liability, when errors or outages mean that patients at US hospitals might be injured or die. This is this same cha-cha, only called a "cloud dance" -- as opposed to a big iron / mainframes over telephone modems undertaking (of the old IBM days), to my experienced eye.

Before we get to the uber-happy talk from today's presser, I'd starkly warn AWS to closely read the agreements: they may (along with FDA law and regulations) transfer/fix liability for the ultimate patient consequences of system failures. . . on you. Under US law, that could be an insanely vast exposure. Now, we turn to the corporates' happy talk:

. . .Sharesource [Baxter's remote renal monitoring suite] is powered by AWS, which enables Baxter to support daily treatments at scale while also expanding the platform to include new analytics capabilities, among other enhancements. Sharesource is the most widely adopted home dialysis digital health solution, supporting nearly 46% of home dialysis patients in more than 70 countries. Sharesource has been used to manage more than 28 million treatments to date. . . .

The cloud transformation is also supporting Baxter's DoseEdge Pharmacy Workflow Manager, an innovative software solution that reduces preventable medication errors from dose preparation in the pharmacy to delivery at the patient’s bedside. DoseEdge seamlessly integrates with a hospital’s pharmacy information system to automate the process of routing, preparing, inspecting, tracking, and reporting on IV and oral liquid doses. While the technology is already used in more than 500 hospitals across the U.S., Baxter's cloud transformation creates an opportunity for accelerated expansion into new markets, while meeting local data security and privacy requirements. . . .

I trust that Amazon's lawyers will really evaluate the additional / excess insurance policies needed to implement this transfer to AWS, and away from. . . Baxter. [In any event. . . the category killer here may be Apple, and its watch. . . albeit a few years off.]

Keep your eyes open, here young people. Grin. . . . with entirely new topics, starting tomorrow. . . right here.

नमस्ते