Forget apps, patients need to see GPs

Published May 23, 2012

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London - Technology is all the rage in healthcare these days. No prizes for guessing why, with its promise to make everything faster, easier, more efficient — and cheaper.

Just this week, British Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced that patients will be able to book doctors’ appointments and receive test results online.

Other initiatives include encouraging more GPs to direct patients to health-related smartphone apps, with the hope that somehow this will ease the pressure on health services.

One such app, called Patients Know Best, allows patients to access records and permits online consultations.

You can see why technology is popular with the bureaucrats — ultimately it should save money — but I can’t help but feel this is wrong.

As I was reading about these technology plans my companion was doing battle with easyJet on the internet, attempting to add one item of luggage for check-in on a forthcoming flight. She sighed: “Sometimes I really would like to talk to a human being.”

Now it looks as if medicine is heading in the same direction — faceless and voiceless ‘care’.

It’s true patients have been using the web for years to gain health information, but to turn that information into useful knowledge about your health requires a face-to-face consultation. Take the Patients Know Best app — it’s good in rural Scotland (although will users be able to get a phone signal?). But even so, it’s a compromise.

I am no Luddite afraid of the new: we had a micro-computer network in our practice in 1979, before the word PC was even coined; and early on we gave our patients access by email.

But there’s no substitute for a face-to-face meeting in medicine: we call it a consultation. Anything else is not good enough. Life in healthcare for patients is hard enough: so who wants second best? - Daily Mail

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