Government bodies are sometimes too slow to implement new technology, and old habits tend to die hard.
Many years ago, when the public World Wide Web was barely one year old, I was offered a job in the ‘technology department’ of a government office. The first two Fridays I was there, my boss produced a letter which he’d printed out from his computer together with a list of about twenty names and phone numbers, and he asked me to fax the letter to everyone on the list.
On third time of asking, I asked him why, instead of printing the letter out and faxing it, which cost money for each fax number on a land line, he didn’t use new technology just attach it to an email and send it direct to each person. It turned out that, despite being the manager of a ‘technology department’, he didn’t know how to do it.
That wasn’t so unusual in those early internet years, and I can still remember the many arguments about how much it cost to send an email. The fact that you could send an email to one person, or to a hundred people, at virtually zero cost was hard for anyone to get their heads around.
I was remined of that this week when comparing a couple of hospitals that my wife and I are fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have to frequent.
My wife visits an NHS hospital which has fully integrated new technology. Usually the same day as her visit, she can log into the hospital app and view the blood test results, and view an after visit summary from the consultant. A couple of days later, she can view a copy of the consultants letter which has been sent to her GP.
I visit a different NHS hospital, where I also give blood and see a consultant, but when I log into that hospital’s app with my hospital or NHS number, the app informs me that I have had no recent appointments and no forthcoming appointments. The NHS app similarly tells me I am not currently under a consultant. I had to phone the hospital today to tell them I had received no text or email confirming a forthcoming operation. They explained confirmation had been sent to me by post, and when I explained that I hadn’t received it, they agreed to send another copy, also by post.
It beggars belief, so many years after the implementation of email, that important letters are still being sent by snail mail, with all its associated cost in both time and money, and not simply attached to an email which arrives almost instantaneously at virtually zero cost. It also seems to me, that if one NHS hospital can be so efficient, then whatever they are doing right ought to be copied as a matter of urgency by other NHS hospitals. New technology, such as sending letters as an attachment to an email, can hardly be called new any more, but it seems old habits die hard.
