The health care technology management field is mourning the loss of Marilyn Sue Bogner, president and chief scientist of the Institute for the Study of Human Error, LLC, who passed away at her home in Bethesda, Md, on August 19. She was 79.
Marilyn Sue Bogner
Bogner, who held a PhD in social psychology, worked for the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine before joining the FDA. There, she made significant strides for the HTM community by connecting serious adverse events related to medical devices to use error.
“Sue served on several influential committees and while at the FDA, played a role in promoting device safety,” says Matthew Weinger, MD, a professor and director of the Nashville, Tenn-based Vanderbilt Center for Research and Innovation in Systems Safety and a member of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Board of Directors. “Her biggest contributions were her two books.”
Bogner edited the first book to address the subject of human error in health care, Human Error in Medicine, which was published in 1994, as well as Misadventures in Health Care: Inside Stories, which described a systems approach to error, in 2004. Bogner also served as an editorial adviser and contributor to AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, BI&T, for a number of years.
“Sue Bogner played an incredibly important role in helping to elevate the content of BI&T. From 2003 to 2006, she led our “Patient Safety Focus” column helping to select, write, and review articles,” says AAMI COO Steve Campbell, who served as managing editor of the journal at that time. “She was a tough cookie when it came to content. Quality mattered a lot. But in the end, she always made the content much stronger. Patient safety was always her focus.”
Visit AAMI’s Web site for more information.
