Dr. Richard Cook was a physician, educator, scholar, and researcher. He was a brilliant thinker and writer.
In 1975, Richard graduated Cum Laude from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin where he was a Scholar of the University. As a college student, Richard had a show on the college radio station.
He worked in the computer industry in supercomputer system design and engineering applications (Control Data Corporation 1975 to 1980). He left Control Data to become a Research Associate in the Department of Anesthesia at Ohio State University. During this time, he hosted a classical music show at a local radio station.
He received his MD degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1986.
Between 1987 and 1991, he was researcher on expert human performance in Anesthesiology and Industrial and Systems Engineering at The Ohio State University (with David Woods). During this time, he investigated a variety of problems in such diverse areas as urban mass transportation, semiconductor manufacturing, and military software systems.
He completed an Anesthesiology residency at Ohio State in 1994 and joined the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor. He founded the Cognitive technologies Laboratory(CtL) in 1996, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002. He was a superb clinician and outstanding educator.
While at the University of Chicago, Richard helped found the National Patient Safety Foundation at the AMA, and served on both its Board of Directors and its Executive Committee. He became an internationally recognized expert on medical accidents, complex systems failures, and human performance at the sharp end. He obtained over $2 million in competitive external funding for his research over his time at the University of Chicago (an enormous amount in the patient safety world). He authored many landmark publications during this time, including “How Complex Systems Fail”, “Operating at the Sharp End”, “A Tale of Two Stories: Contrasting Views of Patient Safety”, "Gaps in the continuity of care and progress on patient safety”, " “Going solid”: a model of system dynamics and consequences for patient safety”, and the book Behind Human Error. These are all required reading for anyone who wants to become an expert in patient safety. If you talk about gaps in health care, going-solid, operating at the sharp end, or resilience/resilience engineering, you are using terms that Richard invented or introduced into the lexicon of health care.
Richard also investigated a number of medical accidents during his time at the University of Chicago. Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements prevented him from writing about them or talking about them in any public venue. After the IOM report of 2000, Richard stood almost alone pointing out that the electronic medical record, computer order entry, bar code medication administration, simulation, and automation were not going to dramatically improve safety in health care. We did not understand enough about how safety was made and broken in healthcare, and consequently there was no chance that these technologies could make anything better. Time has vindicated Richard on all of these and more.
After the massive Haiti earthquake of 2010, Richard participated in a University of Chicago sponsored medical mission to provide care to the injured. His leadership efforts resulted in that site generating the greatest volume of care delivered to the casualties from that disaster. Almost all of the news video about the relief work was recorded at that field hospital.
In 2012, Richard emigrated to Sweden, where he became Professor of Healthcare Systems Safety at the Royal Institute of Technology. He was hopeful that the health care system there would be more supportive of investigating and learning from medical accidents. He transitioned to Emeritus status in 2015 and returned to the USA. Between 2016 and 2020, he divided his time between working in the Anesthesia Department at the Ohio State University and with David Woods in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering.
HIs CV lists 41 peer reviewed publications, 39 conference proceedings (these are important in Human Factors), 6 technical reports, 30 books/book chapters. It also lists more than 225 invited lectures, which is certainly an under-count.
Several of the talks below are not listed. As of today, his work has 9568 citations, an h-index of 43, and an i-10 index of 103.
Starting in 2012, Richard partnered with David Woods to start studying and understanding software crashes. They started an enterprise they called "SNAFU catchers” (video below). A few years later, they joined with John Allspaw to found
“Adaptive Capacity Labs”. Their clients have included a list of who’s who of software companies, and a long list of companies that you have likely never heard of.
Richard was an avid reader with a broad range of interests. He loved to listen to jazz and classical music. He was a great husband, brother, step-father, friend, and colleague.
We will miss him forever.
