how automated healthcare fails, how you'd know, and what to do at each tier — every claim sourced, reviewed continuously
Hospitals are turning into cognitive composite systems: humans, AI models, agents, devices and infrastructure working as one. When the power goes out, the network drops or the model is wrong, lives depend on what happens next. FailSystems is a sourced, continuously updated reference for understanding, classifying and designing against that failure.
Electricity, fuel, water, heat and cooling, including the physical data centres everything clinical now runs on; when they fail, the decision support goes too.
Involved in 7 of 39 incidents (main layer in 7)The networks, interfaces, vendors and records that carry clinical data, and what happens when data is missing, late or wrong.
Involved in 15 of 39 incidents (main layer in 10)The monitors, pumps, ventilators, sensors and analyzers that measure and act on patients, and the software and updates that run them.
Involved in 13 of 39 incidents (main layer in 7)Predictive models, LLMs and agents that stay up while giving wrong answers, so care continues on bad output without anyone switching to a fallback.
Involved in 12 of 39 incidents (main layer in 9)The moment automation hands work back to a person who has stopped watching, stopped practising, or stopped hearing the alarms.
Involved in 26 of 39 incidents (main layer in 6)Not a layer: the way one failure crosses power, connectivity, devices, models and handoff, and spreads from one organisation to many.
Involved in 16 of 39 incidentsAn incident usually involves several layers, so the counts overlap; there are 39 incidents in all. Scores are first-draft FailSystems judgements, not measurements: how they are made.
A safe automated system knows how to become a less automated one. See the full layer × tier matrix.
Normal digital operation: software acquires, routes and checks data, recommends, and in places acts; clinicians supervise and decide.
Power or network gone. Paper, batteries, hand calculation, judgement — and a rehearsed plan.
39 incidents · 216 sources · full changelog · how this stays current
Information only, not advice. FailSystems is an aggregation and synthesis of published sources. It is not consulting, engineering, legal, regulatory or medical advice, and using it creates no professional relationship. Health systems are complex and no approach fits every organisation: anything you adopt is your own decision, at your own risk, and should be checked against the current official sources and by qualified people who know your setting. Full disclaimer.