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Medical Scribblings - March 13 / 2002

As the years go by one is tempted to reminisce about the old days and how things were. Memory is a funny thing; you tend to have selective memories, which are not always representative of what really happened.

With medical care illnesses that loomed large in peoples lives are not even thought of and the more chronic conditions have taken centre stage. There are many things that we still have no way of managing but some have been transformed by modern technology.

One tends to think of the glamorous hospital procedures such as joint replacement and heart operations. These can dramatically improve the lives of people by getting them back on their feet and active again. The less exciting bits are just as important. Things such as long term care of patients with high blood pressure and diabetes can be seen to improve not only the length of life but also avoid the debilitating effects of illness.

It is in this area of long-term care that new technology is really having an effect. The thinking here is to move to a system where the patient is more and more running their own care. Thus for instance most diabetic patients now have a little meter that measures their blood sugar level so that they can adjust treatment on a day-to-day basis. This ties in with the practice computer system so that we can see over a long term how results of test are improving and what drugs are being used. It also allows us to identify when things are likely to go wrong and inform the patient accordingly.

I guess all this is going to accelerate in the next few years and much more of medical care will move nearer to the patient with less and less time being taken up by hospital visits.

Anyway it is a fascinating area to speculate on: what with the Internet, broadband video and patient managed health care. We will have to wait and see.

John Schofield