WHAT EXPERTS SAYS ABOUT DIGITAL DOCTOR

Sir William Osler, arguably the greatest physician of 20th century said this about being one’s own doctor “A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient”. The idea that the digital revolution in medicine will allow patient to manage their own medical cares is na?ve. Doctors and surgeon devote seven or more years of their lives acquiring the knowledge, judgement and experience that allows them to be qualified to care for patients, to be able to do just three things ; make a correct diagnosis, arrive at prognosis and apply the correct treatment. Anyone without the above can play app roulette, surf the net and become his own doctor is folly... Frederick Holmes (Prof emeritus of medicine, university of Kansas)

The root cause of why IT failed to transform the delivery of medical care is information disorder. The only remedy is to define generally accepted standards of care for managing clinical information (patient data and medical knowledge). To bring order, support tools to aid clinical decisions should be designed to identify the required patient data and couple that with medical knowledge….. LINCLOLN WEED (Underhill, Vermont)

Medical apps help people who are mostly young and well and want to consult doctor quickly. They exclude those who suffer greater burden of ill health. Simple IT answers exist at the expense of the more complex and expensive patients who must continue on their traditional general practices for healthcare. These practices will have lesser income if they lose young, healthy patients to apps, but will have to do more work caring for the complex cases. The research evidence doesn’t suggest that this new service results in better access or better-quality care with fewer costs. Doctor wants innovations that will improve the workload and workforce crisis in National Health Service, rather than fake innovations that make crisis worst…. TERRY KEMPLE (Former president Royal College of General Practitioners, Bristol)