Early computer programmers were not quite as visionary as we imagined them to be. They were, however, masters of cost-efficiency and, because of memory limitations, decided to use only the last two digits to enter the year in any software function that required the recording of a date. At the time, it all made sense. Data was entered, by and large, using crowded punch cards and memory was hard to come by and expensive. This might occur because a faulty logic equation commonly used to tell many date-dependant programs that a given year is a leap year might fail to determine that this is the case for the year 2000.
Family physicians are both businessmen and health care providers.
The Y2K Bug threatens us on both fronts. As primary health care providers, we will want to be certain that any medical devices we might use in our offices and clinics are free of embedded chips that carry date-sensitive programming. Sadly, it has been said that even the most thorough screening process for Device Y2K Compliance might fail to uncover the presence of some chips carrying date-sensitive routines. This could occur if the manufacturer of a given device was not aware that a chip being used in a current device carries this date-sensitive property, occultly, as a legacy from its use in some previous gadget. Clearly, the impact of the Y2K Bug is not fully predictable.