Robots

I heard an interesting piece on the BBC News this week about the introduction of robots in a Scottish hospital.  The report started out by explaining that “A new hospital being built at Larbert in Stirlingshire will be the first in the UK to use a fleet of robots to transport goods and equipment.  Well my this took me roaring back to when I was working at IBM.  During the mid 1980’s as I recall it was decided to introduce a range of industrial robots perform a range of manufacturing tasks and even a fully automated warehouse.   But by far the most useless of all this robots was the one that looked exactly like the one featured in this BBC report on the robots that are going to do almost everything except operate on the people who one day will be admitted there.

However, what I recall most about our robot at IBM was that whenever I came across it there seemed to be some problem with the thing.  I would turn a corner and find it lurking and stationary in the middle of the gangway on which was the yellow “track” that the glorified train was supposed to follow.  Usually a hapless storeman or “Line Analyst” as some stockmen were called was dispatched to “re-boot” the thing, that is to say press a large red button on it and hope that it detected its track on the ground again and set off to where ever it was going to shudder to a stop and be unloaded by the “Line Analyst” who was supposed to be waiting for the parts to restock the manufacturing line. 

I suspect that it was not the cleaners who had damaged the guidance track when polishing the floors, although it may have been a contribution, but more likely the “Line Analyst” who could have grabbed his trolley, gone to the stores and restocked in half the time!

This is what I thought these robots would look like

But this is what they actually look like!

Err, the one on the right it the robot!

I feel relieved that it’s unlikely that I will be admitted to this new Scottish hospital so do not have to worry if my medication arrives “untouched by human hand”, or my meal or even a robotic nurse.  I didn’t trust the things back then in the dark days of the Mid 80’s when clearly IBM was way ahead of the robotics games.

So just where did David Stark, a director of the architectural company Keppie Design really  get the idea?  I bet he was an young industrial engineer at IBM Havant back in the 80’s or if not, he knew someone that was!!

PS: Remember this!

Three Laws of Robotics

 

 

The NHS and Smoking

Now it’s fairly well known that smoking tobacco is not actually that good for your health.  Despite the protestations of ASH the evidence is still firmly on the side of the medics of the land (if not the world) and that is “Smoking Kills”. 

So when we were on our way back from our regular constitution from the town to home we take a short cut through St Richard’s Hospital.  Everywhere you look that are a couple of giant signs and a multitude of smaller one warning that smoking is not permitted in any building OR the grounds of the hospital.  This I think is evident given the number of smokers that lurk on the very boundaries of the Hospital puffing their cancer sticks. 

It was with some considerable surprise when only last week we noticed the number of patients and Staff (?) who seem intent upon defying the Health Authority edit and lurking around so many corners of the hospital.  We have spotted numerous smokers actually smoking next to the "No Smoking” signs!!  One woman complete with pyjamas and a rather fetching pink dressing gown left the maternity wing and sat down in the sun outside of the Dieticians office and lit up! Two other women came out from the hospitals specialist treatment area which is not far from the nearby cancer treatment facility and then, yes you’ve got it, lit up under the No Smoking sign right outside the doors.  Finally, a young woman in a wheel chair was sitting outside an admin building (under another No Smoking sign) puffing away on a fag.  Is there perhaps special dispensation for the wheelchair bound in terms of smoking?

We did wonder if the NHS/Hospital ought to be doing more to make sure that its orders were obeyed?  Should there be “fines” levied?

I suppose some may argue that if they are terminally ill then smoking wont make any difference.  I still think that the NHS should be doing more.

Now, My Quote of “Quotes of the week” (from the Mail on Sunday 11th April)

“Wooden-headed bureaucratic silliness combined with a well-meaning and completely misplaced anxiety about giving offence to non-Christians”

(Dr Rowan William, the Archbishop of Canterbury
responding to attacks on Christianity, highlighted by the case of a nurse wearing a crucifix on the wards)

My next blog will be about the crazy idea of giving votes to 16 year olds!!!

Technorati Tags: St Richard's Hospital chichester,NHS,Smoking,Cancer

NHS Hospitals – A Question

Most days we make a point of walking into Chichester, it’s a good way to get fresh air and also a very good means of exercise.  So we set off on one of the routes we favour pick up a paper, drop into Costa Coffee and have a “Flat White” each and then set off back home having done whatever else needed doing during our venture into town.  Now I have to say that we generally avoid the town at weekends or bank holidays given the number of people thronging the streets at these times.  But on those occasions when we do venture out we invariably make our way home via our favoured route, which is through the grounds of St Richard’s Hospital.  It’s relaxing, relatively clean and tidy and it feels shorter than going around the houses.  Strange to say that on these occasions when we do use the hospital route at weekends or bank holidays the hustle and bustle, the full to overflowing car parks and the stream of doctors, nurses, visitors, patients and all the other staff that are employed at St Richard’s during the working week seem entirely absent, the place seems to be almost deserted.  Well as ever, this got me to asking some questions

• Why are there no visitors on weekends or holidays? (given the empty car parks)
• Where are all the hospital staff hiding?
• Do people only have accidents or need hospital care during working hours?
• Who is actually looking after the patients on the wards?
• Why isn’t a hospital a fully 24 hour operation/Service?

All I can say is that I don’t want to be admitted to hospital at a weekend or when there is a public holiday and nor do I want to be in one during the same times.
I think that ALL NHS staff working at hospitals should work the same shifts as the medical staff so that there is cover ALL the time and not at the convenience of the workforce!
Discuss!

Is this the latest transplant option, off the shelf?
…………and what the heck!

Healthy thoughts

Here we are during the late summer happy in the thoughts that the News on TV and radio is all about "recovery", of the economy and by all accounts people are being allowed to borrow again! Well I thought, is this good news or not and so during this moment of thought I was drawn towards a report about a recent case at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital where several unfortunate patients were medicated to death by a so called well meaning doctor. Then it struck me, they have just built a new "super hospital" in Portsmouth and this has received wide local coverage as a pinnacle and flagship of NHS care.

So where has all the MRSA gone? Have the hygiene standards of hospitals, medical staff and visitors improved so much that the dreaded infection has been eradicated? Only recently on visiting a very ill friend of mine in hospital which caused me to notice how few doctors, if any, wore "scrubs" and how unkempt many of the nurses seemed given the emphasis on the battle against MRSA. I then reflected on when I went to have a rather minor, if not painful operation on my nose I noticed that the consultant surgeon who was going to remove the rather intrusive "lump" from my nose, was wearing the same red silk tie ( I assume consultant surgeons would not stoop to polyester ties) that he had been wearing on both initial consultations some weeks before. Coincidence, I don't think so.

It's no wonder then that some of these rampant hospital infections seem to run wild but is it not strange that since we went into recession the level of reporting these cases has all but disappeared?

So lets see more doctors, surgeons and all medical professionals working in nice clean, sterilised and hygienic "scrubs" - if I could could think of a suitable English word in place of this Americanism then I would, so I apologise to my readers who revile all such uses of Americanisms in the English language!

I am going to be looking out for MRSA reports from now on and perhaps if they start to emerge and increase in number then just may be that will signal the start of the rise from recession!