- The report 'Patiëntveiligheid bij ICT-uitval in ziekenhuizen' emphasizes that ICT failures in hospitals can be life-threatening.
- High reliability in ICT requires simple systems with independent emergency solutions, not complex redundancy.
- Complex redundancy often leads to larger and longer outages due to increased complexity (e.g., network loops, multi-master database conflicts).
- Typical modern ICT stacks (PC, app, VM, server, network, storage, power) have long dependency chains; a single failure can cause total shutdown.
- An example: a double-plugged laptop caused a network loop, leading to minutes of downtime and crashing all VMs.
- Simpler standalone systems with local storage and data copies are more resilient, like having a second printer or seventh ambulance.
- Accept that failures are inevitable; have an independent 'Plan B' instead of chasing 99.999% uptime.
- Complexity is the enemy of high availability.
- SLAs often guarantee only response times, not actual uptime, and penalties are minimal.
- For life-critical ICT, avoid office automation best practices; choose simple, independent systems.