We are Fake Digital?

We are Fake Digital?

Last week it was announced that Scotland had the highest number of drug-related deaths in Europe. It was not a good statistic. So as a country we need to understand how best support those who have become dependent on drugs, and find evidence to understand why individuals have managed to get themselves into this situation. We also need to be understanding the treatments that work best, and where we should focusing our efforts.

To me, a database which gathers data on those involved — and with privacy-privacy and consent techniques used — must be one of the best investments that any country could put in place. It is something that is simple to create, and you can have it all on a smart phone. It really isn’t difficult, and I am sure that most IT Professionals could create something that was workable on both Android and iPhone within just a few days. It would have a simple user interface, and use the best of security (with biometric-based login) and lots of safeguards on accessing the data. We could make it where we could enter data over a mobile device, but where the data could only be viewed on certain trusted addresses. Risks could then be assessed using basic expert rules, or where we could apply machine learning, and in real-time we could identify those at most risk to themselves and/or their families.

But, what is happening? Well, the NHS in Scotland has taken eight years and invested 1 million UK pounds in creating the DAISy database, and nothing has resulted. I am really gobsmaked that it takes so long, to do something so simple:

And, I can’t email/VC my GP, I don’t have an online medical record for things like immunisations, we have no real digital health record for our kids, I have no real digital ID for health care, there’s no digital signing on anything, I have no real digital interaction with the public sector, …

We have severely under-invested in our digital infrastructure for our public sector, and we need more architects who can design for the future, and fewer technicians. Please can someone step forward — soon — and show us a vision of how our health care system will look, and which matches a world which focuses on the citizen, and not those who work within the public sector.

We need to stop awarding contracts to large and faceless companies within the public sector and to in-house IT teams, and support innovative companies to rebuild with no thought of the legacy ways of the past.