Tom Bowden wrote: > Hi Ken, > > Thanks very much for circulating this very thought provoking article. > I am continuing to watch developments in Britain with great interest. > I think it provides a useful way in which to determine whether a > central records system is viable;- useful particularly insomuch as we > can watch it from a ring-side seat.
snip > I note that in this week's 'Economist', the British National Heralth > Service (NHS) is viewed as being in severe trouble "The NHS is running > out of excuses and time." The article asks why there are still huge > deficits and blowouts when the NHS' budget has doubled in the past > seven years. It seems to me that the spectacular lack of success of > the NHS reforms has become a huge political issue and if The British > Labour Party loses the next election which seems likely, the > NPfIT programme will become a casualty too unless it shows > significantly more promise than currently appears to be the case. It > certainly will be interesting to hear NPfIT boss Richard Granger's > views on the subject when he addresses the CHIK conference (Melbourne) > in early April. > > On a related note, I thought that people with an interest in this > subject might care to read the following viewpoint by Spyros > Andreopoulos, Director Emeritus of the Office of Communication and > Public Affairs at Stanford University School of Medicine. It was > published in The San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, March 14, 2006 > > Dr Andreopoulos wrote:- I too agree with Tom and I think we are all perfectly happy to watch the NHS NPfIT developments from our distant shore. At 10 billion Euros it's said to be the largest civil IT project in history. Alas, one cannot help but get the feeling that we are watching "The Titanic" but instead of it lasting three hours it takes 10 years to go down. Maybe the British Conservatives will let us home at intermission. The NHS is a Microsoft vessel which seems to me another rent in the hull. Stuffing lots of money into these breaches may slow the process but not alter the outcome. Two years ago the NHS flirted with Sun's Java Desktop System but in retrospect this was just maneuvering to get the best deal out of Microsoft. They sounded quite chuffed with themselves in the end. http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/PressReleases/PressReleasesNotices/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4093392&chk=KUsXWa > "If patient information moves successfully from paper to the computer, > as its champions hope, the door to privacy abuses will swing wide > open. One suggested solution is to give patients the right to work > with the doctors to decide what is included in his or her record. A > small step to be sure, but if the law and doctors were to give > patients this amount of empowerment and autonomy, the doctor-patient > relationship will have come a long way." > > /Spyros Andreopoulos is director emeritus of the Office of > Communication and Public Affairs at Stanford University School of > Medicine. The article reflects his opinion alone./ > I am still not sure about all this privacy stuff. I had a patient wanting her file under FoI yesterday. That was fine by me. In the last ten years I haven't written anything in a file that I did not want the patient to read. Some of my specialist colleagues are not so circumspect but that is also part of their job. So if a patient has control over what goes into the file does that mean they don't have the illness. Can patients choose not to have Huntington's or schizophrenia or a history of sexual abuse? I find it hard to understand these things in this age of Newspeak. David -- If an echocardiogram happens in a hospital but nobody sees the report, did it really happen? SIP [EMAIL PROTECTED] NodePhone +61 7 31290168 Jabber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
_______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
