RE: Warning of major NHS IT overspend

["Owen Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ian G Batten
> Sent: 30 October 2004 14:34
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Warning of major NHS IT overspend
>
>
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Owen Lewis wrote:
> > > Which is why people with powerful allergies are advised to
> wear medilert
> > > bracelets or similar.
> >
> > With medical records summonable by a clinician, there'd be no
> need to ponce
> > about with a bracelet destroying an element of ones privacy as all and
>
> Unless you happened to be overseas.  Or the power happened to be off.
> Or you were being treated in the field.  Or, or, or...
>
> When I travel, I have my travel arrangements on my PDA.  And a printout
> in my bag.


What an organised soul you are. I bet you have travel insurance too :-)

And when you find yourself, unconscious and with a smashed leg, in
Kazakhstan and being treated by a descendant of the Golden Horde, whose
greatest linguistic adventure some 30 years earlier was to learn
conversational Russian - may your charm bracelet bring you much luck.

I think the point is that a UK national medical record scheme is intended
for use in the UK. For myself, I'd rather than a clinician treating me can
summon up my entire medical record than not. Sure, this has not been
possible in the past. That seems a scant argument for not doing so now and
for the future.

Also I find it a bad idea that the patient should be empowered selectively
to block access to specified entries in the record to clinician A but not to
clinician B. Such inexpert meddling can surely produce no good consequence
and may sometimes produce a bad one; it has the appearance of political
correctness running riot (again).

Owen