Consequences Of Data Mutability

Today's blog, like yesterday's blog, is based on a discussion in Principles of Big Data: Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing Complex Information. The book's table of contents is shown in an earlier blog. Here is an example of a immutability problem:  You are a pathologist working in a university hospital that has just installed a new, $600 million information system. On Tuesday, you released a report on a surgical biopsy, indicating that it contained cancer. On Friday morning, you showed the same biopsy to your colleagues, who all agreed that the biopsy was not malignant, and contained a benign condition that simulated malignancy (looked a little like a cancer, but was not).  Your original diagnosis was wrong, and now you must rectify the error.  You return to the computer, and access the prior report, changing the wording of the diagnosis to indicate that the biopsy is benign.  You can do this, because pathologists are granted "edit" access for pathology reports.  Now, everything seems to have been set right.  The report has been corrected, and the final report in the computer is official diagnosis.Unknown to you, the patient's doctor read the incorrect report on Wednesday, the day after the incorrect report was issued, and two days before the correct report replaced the incorrect report. Major surgery was scheduled for the following Wednesday (five days after the corrected report was issued).  Most of the patient's liver was removed.  ...
Source: Specified Life - Category: Pathologists Source Type: blogs