{"id":1102,"date":"2010-08-09T15:06:41","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T15:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2015-02-25T16:03:44","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:03:44","slug":"diagnosis-by-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1102","title":{"rendered":"Diagnosis by Google"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Monday 9<sup>th<\/sup> August 2010<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>DIAGNOSIS BY GOOGLE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It seems there is nothing you can\u2019t do these days with a click of your mouse and a broadband connection.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Reading the newspapers, checking in for your flight or doing your weekly shop, the internet has opened up a world of conveniences.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So it is no surprise that the NHS is getting in on the act with a website launch this week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With the budget pressures on the health service, Nicola Sturgeon was criticised for spending \u00a3550,000 on the website, offers \u2018non-urgent\u2019 health information.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With much of the information contained elsewhere on the web, I was left asking the question who exactly is this website for?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">People today are so empowered that Google has become their first point of diagnosis and they can choose from a whole range of remedies that can be bought over the whole counter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As a result, their expectations are far higher.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For instance, why\u00a0shouldn&#8217;t\u00a0people be able to book an appointment with a GP at a time of their choice, just like you would with a restaurant or theatre booking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Why\u00a0shouldn&#8217;t\u00a0blood test results be e-mailed to people rather than an anxious wait at the health centre.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And why do people have to hang around on the phone for a repeat prescription when a click of a button could do the job.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The lack of ambition in these health websites was highlighted by a report just this week, which insisted they were failing patients.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Scottish Government talks a good game about putting patients first, but a thoughtless website like this is no good to someone without a computer, and probably no good to someone who has.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If the health secretary continues to waste cash like this, at a time when jobs and services are being cut here in Inverclyde, it won\u2019t be just health information that is on line.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It will be her job on the line.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday 9th August 2010 DIAGNOSIS BY GOOGLE It seems there is nothing you can\u2019t do these days with a click of your mouse and a broadband connection. Reading the newspapers, checking in for your flight or doing your weekly shop, the internet has opened up a world of conveniences. So it is no surprise that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holyrood-message"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}