IT scandal
I suggest extreme caution in hoping for success for John Harper's vision of the NHS as a user of IT (Online, May 18). For the past 10 years GPs have been encouraged to install computers with 50-100% grants towards their cost. More than £500m has been spent.
There has been no authoritative body guiding the use these computers;18 different companies are licensed as suppliers, none of whose systems interact. There is no common goal for GP practices or even within practices.
You can find a practice of four doctors where one puts all the consultation onto the computer only, another puts it into the written notes only and the other two put it into the computer and the notes.
About 10% of practices are paperless - using computers only - while the other 90% still use paper records with or without the computer.
The benefit to patient care has been zero to negative, where some of the records are in the computer and some in the notes, so that there is no continuous record.
This scandalous waste of money far outstrips the Home Office passport fiasco or Social Security's bumbling chaos. The mere mention of IT is enough to switch off all critical analysis.
Dr Tony Fogarty
ElizabethMartyn@compuserve.com
Using technology to revolutionise the way the NHS works is all very well; I can see why techies and some doctors might think it's a good idea, but what about the patients?
The scenario John Harper describes of a woman with a positive smear test for cancer being "reassured online" is truly horrific.
Given the choice between waiting to see a consultant in person or having a video image of my cervix relayed down the line to some unknown person (or persons - how do we know who else is looking?), I'd opt for the former every time. Some things just can't be done at a distance, no matter how good the technology. And this is one area that needs good interpersonal skills applied face to face.
Lesley Warner
Ilford, Essex
Why Linux?
What's this obsession with Linux? The reason Bill Gates is so wealthy is that every Microsoft product his company produces works first time (it has for me, at least) and goes on working.
That's the reason computer nerds don't like it: it restricts their income. If we all fiddled around endlessly with a system that doesn't allow a mouse to work, and can't use PCI modems, we'd all have techies living in the spare bedroom charging us rent.
When will journalists realise that the computer is a tool, not an end in itself?
David East
Noises off
The new version of Voice Xpress 5.0 discards spoken noises when interpreting speech (Online, May 18). So what? Dragon Dictate Classic has been doing this for me for several years!
Lindsay Jackson
l.c.jackson@itd.maff.gsi.gov.uk
Skills ignored
I empathise with graduate Andrew Doidge (Online, May 18) in his search for jobs in the engineering industry. I've encountered the same opportunity brickwalls in the IT industry.
I graduated with a BSc honours in 1979, spent the next 20 years developing commercial applications for a large company before the job became redundant after downsizing then went to university to retrain in the latest software skills allegedly needed by the industry (C++, Java, internet programming, Oracle, etc).
Like Andrew, six months on and despite many letters to agencies and employers, I have yet to get my first job interview. It is extremely frustrating, especially after all my efforts to re-skill at my own expense.
There are many good people in the UK, with or without experience, who have the potential and a strong desire to become valued professional workers in their chosen field. Sadly, many of them are being overlooked and, more worryingly, forgotten.
When I hear "we cannot find talented people" or "there is a skills crisis" then there is something seriously wrong.
John Thorpe
Virus threat
Last week's letters stating that a computer becoming infected by a virus should be no more likely than catching "syphilis by reading pornography" and that now "any moderately competent programmer" could create a "Love Bug" virus point towards an inevitability.
It took legislators some 70 years to start to control the car. Vehicle testing, seat belts, drink driving and emission control laws are now widely accepted as in the interest of society.
At the moment legislators are more concerned with limiting the monopoly power of Microsoft and gaining access to our information. Should they concentrate rather on the key issue of safety? They could deter manufacturers from introducing operating systems that enable a virus to arrive on an email and take control of a computer.
In today's wired but unregulated world it is too easy for the dishonest to infect the community at large. The billions of pounds cost attributed to the Love Bug is the price we pay for a "free for all" computing and internet environment.
Of course the industry could attempt to control itself. Returning to the car analogy, this would result in computers that can be used on the "public highway" and unrestriced computers intended for "off road" use only. But what's to stop the irresponsible driving their off-roader on public roads?
Ultimately a role for the rule of law exists and that in turn will enable governments to police and tax e-commerce. Now I wonder who really was responsible for the Love Bug?
Len Miller
Let's drop it
I've been away and come late to the correspondence about hailstones, but, just for the record, Galileo never dropped anything off the Leaning Tower. Somebody else did, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove him wrong!
John Gribbin
