Cardiac pacing in the next millenium: a problem?

Like in other fields in medicine, the unpredictable behaviour of computer systems, known as the millennium problem is finally gaining interest in cardiology. In general two major categories of problems can be predicted. Firstly the large computer programs where the use of a real time clock representation should be considered in many thousands of lines of software. Secondly a class of problems is formed by devices were software is embedded in hardware and cannot be reprogrammed other than by replacing EPROM. In cardiology an additional problem is formed by those devices that have been implanted and cannot be reprogrammed, like pacemakers and defibrillators. To investigate the potential risk of malfunctioning of implantable cardiac devices, the Netherlands Pacemaker Registry Foundation has performed a survey on all traceable pacemaker and defibrillator companies active in The Netherlands