Prof Harold Thimbleby is See Change Fellow in Digital Health, based at Swansea University, Wales. He is Expert Advisor on IT to the Royal College of Physicians, a member of the World Health Organization's Patient Safety Network, and an advisor to the Clinical Human Factors Group and to the UK Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Although a professor of computer science, he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians, and of the Royal Society of Arts; he's also a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has been a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder and a Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, and he is 28th Gresham Professor of Geometry. Harold won the British Computer Society's Wilkes Medal and his last book, Press On: Principles of Interaction Programming (MIT Press), won several international awards.

• 1.: How to read this book


• PART 1: Diagnosis - riskier than you think


• 2: We don't know what we don't know


• 3: Cat Thinking


• 4: Dogs dancing


• 5: Fatal overdose


• 6: Swiss Cheese


• 7: Victims and second victims


• 8: Side-effects and scandals


• 9: The scale of the problem


• 10: Medical apps and bug blocking


• PART 2: Treatment - Finding solutions


• 11: Cars have got safer


• 12: Safety Two


• 13: Computational Thinking


• 14: Risky calculations


• 15: Who's accountable?


• 16: Regulation needs fixing


• 17: Safe and secure


• 18: Who profits?


• 19: Interoperability


• 20: Human Factors


• 21: Computer Factors


• 22: User Centered Design


• 23: Iterative Design


• 24: Wedge Thinking


• 25: Attention to detail


• 26: Planes have got safer


• 27: Stories for developers


• 28: Finding bugs


• 29: Choose safety


• Part 3: Prognosis - a better future


• 30: Signs of life


• 31: The pivotal pandemic?


• 32: Living happily ever after


• 33: Good reading


• 34: Notes


• 35: Healthcare openness and acknowledgements