Although hardly a day goes by without hearing about the millennium bug and its possible repercussions, there has been very little about it in the medical press. The'millennium bug', 'millennium switch', 'year 2000 issue' or 'Y2K problem' is the potential for any device with a date sensitive microprocessor to malfunction on 1 st January 2000. This stems from historical attempts to compress computer data by using a six digit code for dates, leaving only two digits to describe the year [1, 2]. Time dependent systems also derive their data from date dependent systems. This raises the possibility that any time or date dependent system may malfunction. Problems are anticipated with social security payments, credit cards and cash machines, mortgage interest repayments, machinery and older models of cars [1 ]. This may also have an impact within hospitals. Malfunctions in many systems are theoretically possible, including data banks and information retrieval, security access, lifts, telephones, switchboards and communications, fire alarms and critical care equipment of all kinds as well as all sorts of computers [1-4].
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