John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

“Jens Danstrup, a 77-year-old retired architect, used to bike all around town. But years of smoking have weakened his lungs, and these days he finds it difficult to walk down his front steps and hail a taxi for a doctor’s appointment.

Now, however, he can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera. He takes his own weekly medical readings, which are sent to his doctor via a Bluetooth connection and automatically logged into an electronic record.

“You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.”

Read the rest of the original article here.

Why can’t we do this in Ireland. We have the expertise. The last time my Mother was in A&E I had to tell the doctor she had recently had a heart attack. The doctor took an ECG but couldn’t compare it to the mothers normal readings because it was on paper locked in a fecking cupboard.

The main reason I think we don’t do this is because they’d had to leave go all the admins whose sole job is moving paper around in this archaic system. It’s embarrassing and, in the case of my mother and others like her, dangerous.