Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Dec 14/98) - Employees of the Baffin regional health and social services board have been fighting a different kind of bug over the last eight months.

According to Jeff Bisson, the technical analyst at the Baffin Regional Hospital, one of his biggest tasks since arriving in Iqaluit last April was to make sure that all health-care related technological equipment around the region was protected from what has become known as the Y2K bug.

"What I really want is when New Year's Day comes on the year 2000, it's just like it was the year before. I don't want it to affect the performance of the hospital," Bisson said, referring to the international technology glitch facing the world at 12:00 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000.

Bisson explained that because of the way computer code has been written for the last three decades -- using just the last two digits of the four-digit year -- any kind of machine that runs on a computer chip or has an internal clock won't be able to recognize the switch over from "99" to "00" as the year 2000.

Bisson explained that this could result in three different outcomes.

"It can fail completely, it'll continue to run on like nothing has happened but with the wrong date or there will be a grey area where there might be a few little glitches," Bisson said.

Taking direction from a NWT-wide task force that was formed in May, Bisson said he began to catalogue all of the susceptible equipment in June and July. That list was then divided up into four different categories including computer systems and networks, communications and phone systems, hospital equipment and everything in the community nursing centres outside of the regional centre.

Staff employed by departments in all four categories were then assigned a deadline by which they had to contact the manufacturers that supplied their equipment to find out what the possible solutions were.

"We already have quite a few of the companies contacted. Half of the battle is to find out what the problems are going to be and the other half is finding solutions."

Bisson anticipated that all departments and centres around Baffin Island would be finished the task by July 1, 1999.

He said this would give him another six months to deal with the smaller problems that might arise.

As far as estimating the cost of dealing with the Y2K bug in the Baffin's health-care system, Bisson said it was difficult to do because much of the equipment in the region was already in the process of being updated and the newer products have been designed to be year-2000 compliant.

"The main thing is, we want the hospital to be able to continue on after the year 2000."

Bisson urges anyone with questions to contact the manufacturers of the equipment or the appropriate businesses.