Don't Get Sick In Australia

As part of my undercover day job, I went and visited a part of the Health Department of Western Australia.

I grew angrier and angrier as the meeting went on.

It wasn't that they wouldn't buy the software we sell. It wasn't the incredible ignorance of the people sitting before me and their irritating attempt to catch me out (which, by the way, failed).

What made me really, really angry, was this - doctors in hospitals in 2006 in a country as fabulously wealthy as Australia are using computers from the mid-90s, running Microsoft Windows 95 (an operating system no longer supported by its makers), with minimum security measures, to look up patient health records.

Let me run that by you again, but this time in English.

Doctors in hospitals in 2006 are using the technological equivalent of a hammer as anasthetic. This isn't a discussion about Windows because if it were Windows XP or 2000 I wouldn't mind. I also wouldn't mind if the hardware had been purchased in the last three years.

Picture this. You've been admitted to hospital suffering from a strong headache, so strong you are unable to respond coherently to requests. That's ok, says the doc. Suddenly, you go into anaphylaxis. The doctor will rush to a computer to look up your records. The computer is running on what is basically as powerful as a modern PDA but an OS that requires rather more than that. You've just gone into cardiac arrest. The doctor has to make a call because your records still haven't appeared.

You are now clinically dead. Your records still haven't appeared. The staff begin to resuciate. Your osteperosis sees your ribs smashed to pieces and another medical problem means that their attempts to jumpstart your heart, which is stricken by cardiomyopathy means you stand no chance.

You are now dead.

What would it have cost the government to give you a greater chance of survival? Probably around $450. You read that right.

The people I was meeting said there were anywhere from 600 to 3000 computers of this ilk floating around a mere four hospitals in the area. What about the other ones? Not sure...no budget to fix. None of your business, there's nothing wrong with it.

It wasn't just that these computers were still out there, it was the fact these cretins were responding with (at best) a shrug of the shoulders, at worst they were defending this position.

I am so angry about this. We can host Commonwealth Games and piss all manner of money up against the wall on frivolities and I bet you any money that kids on recycled computers in the Congo have more computing power than doctors in Australia in the 21st century. The hand-cranked computer for the third world has more grunt.

I kid you not. This country is going to hell in a handcart and more people are being sent to hell early for the sake of a couple of million dollars in a country swimming in money as a result of a resources boom.