Out now
The Technology Was Never the Problem
Forty years inside medical technology, and the machine that finally learned to ask.
I spent forty years building the machines that were supposed to prevent medication error. Brain monitors, anesthesia records, infusion pumps wired into the hospital records I helped write the standards for. Every one of them worked. Almost none of them changed what happened to patients.
This is the honest accounting of why, told from the inside by someone who signed off on the compromises. 320 pages, twenty three chapters, with a foreword by Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN.
AI MedAgent
A reasoning layer for medication management
The last chapters of the book argue that the missing piece was never connectivity. It was the ability to reason over the data once it arrived. Rather than only argue it, I built a demonstration. It reasons over a simulated patient, in a browser, and it is running now.
It is a demonstration, not a product, and it is not cleared for clinical use. Chapter 22 of the book is my own list of everything still wrong with it.
Inside the Loop
Where the argument keeps going
A newsletter about healthcare technology, written from inside it. The six gates that stop good technology from reaching a patient. What Epic actually announced at its user meeting. Why the toll booth on medical vocabulary is still standing. Free.
Background
Forty years building connected medication management, most of it in the gap between a medical device and the record that is supposed to know what the device did.
Co-founded iMetrikus in 1999 and shipped MetrikLink, a consumer gateway that put home medical devices onto a cloud health record in 2001. Moved to Alaris, then Cardinal Health, then CareFusion, then BD, where the acute-care infusion business went from roughly a quarter of the market to more than half, and over a million infusion pumps were connected to the electronic medical record. Contributed to the IHE standards that carry infusion data into hospital records. Named on two US patents. Retired in 2019.
| 1999 – 2003 | Co-founder and VP, iMetrikus. Cloud personal health record with remote device connectivity. MetrikLink gateway. |
| 2003 – 2009 | VP Product and Connectivity, Alaris and Cardinal Health. Alaris Server, wireless networked infusion. |
| 2009 – 2015 | VP Strategy and Innovation, CareFusion. Convened the 2011 Connectivity Summit in San Diego. |
| 2015 – 2019 | VP, Becton Dickinson. EMR integration strategy through the CareFusion acquisition. |
| 2019 – | Retired. Writing, and building AI MedAgent. Available for selected board and advisory work. |
Published work
- 2026 · Book The Technology Was Never the Problem Inside the Loop Press. 320 pages. ISBN 979-8-9977104-0-8.
- 2014 · Best article of the year Worth the Effort? Closed-Loop Infusion Pump Integration with the EMR Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, AAMI. With T. Vanderveen.
- 2014 Reliable and Scalable Infusion System Integration with the Electronic Medical Record Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology. With Vanderveen, Canfield, Schad.
- 2011 Where IT Meets IV: Integrating Intravenous Infusion Devices with Hospital Information Systems Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, AAMI. With T. Vanderveen.
- 2011 IV Infusion Pump Wireless Connectivity: Development, Current Status and Requirements for Success Proceedings, 11th CareFusion Connectivity Summit, San Diego.
- 2017 · Conference Connected Medication Management Strategy: End-to-End Platform Architecture HIC Health Informatics Conference, Brisbane.
Curebound
Riding for cancer research at UC San Diego
I ride the Curebound Cancer Challenge at UC San Diego, formerly Padres Pedal the Cause. The event has raised more than $32.5 million for cancer research over a decade, and 100 percent of participant-raised funds go directly to prevention, detection and treatment research in San Diego.
Forty years of arguing that the technology was never the problem, and then a weekend a year on a bicycle for the people actually doing the science. It is not a contradiction. It is the same bet.
Contact
The book is the argument. If it is useful to a problem you are working on, I am reachable.
I take on a small number of board and advisory engagements in medical technology and connected health, and I am selective about them because I am retired and can afford to be.
danpettus@outlook.com
LinkedIn
Murrieta, California.