Reading through that letter yet again, I wondered about the mysterious organisation the coordinator coordinated. It seemed important to work that out in order to understand this puzzling speed of events. I found this quite irritating. My morning routine had been well and truly scuppered and I neither wanted nor needed this intrusion into my daily devotion before the altar of You Tube.
My frustration grew as I recalled an equally confusing letter I'd received for a colonoscopy appointment at the same Royal Infirmary in 2017. As I write this I wonder why the memory has come back to me so clearly and unexpectedly. There must be a reason. I guess it's part of my story and therefore part of this story. And I sincerely hope that in due course it doesn't become part of another tale of my personal experience on a different blog.
But that's cancer for you, isn't it? It goes wherever it wants, whenever it wants. Microscopic cells motivated only by their mission to multiply and destroy.
The 2017 letter is memorable for several reasons. There were no directions to the relevant endoscopy suite but its location was apparently stated in the header, which was one continuous unbroken line of hospital jargon containing various abbreviations. It was complete gobbledygook to me. However, embedded in that stream of NHS consciousness I noticed three capitalised letters, the last two of which were R (for Royal?) and I (for Infirmary?). They were preceded by a letter that was also the initial letter of the city's name. Oh well, I reasoned, that was a pretty good start. It was a safe enough bet that I'd managed to work out the name of the hospital in question. All I needed to do was find the endoscopy suite.
My appointment was early on a Saturday morning and followed an awful night of bowel prep, copious colorectal action and little sleep. I felt drained, weak and anxious. Apart from a solitary cleaner rhythmically sweeping away with his floor polisher, the endless corridors of this typically extensive hospital were completely deserted. My appointment time was drawing closer by the minute. I walked faster and faster, following the signs to the Information Point, ever hopeful I'd find a friendly volunteer keen to spring into action and point me in the right direction.
Unfortunately, early on a Saturday morning those helpful souls had yet to stir. I found myself breathless, alone and crestfallen as I stared at closed shutters, confronted by the realisation that I was almost out of time.
The cleaner seemed surprised when I frantically thrust my letter at him and asked if he had any idea where I should go. He didn't. But he was obviously ready for a break and up for a bit of detective work. After a lot of frowning and peering at the letter he suddenly smiled triumphantly and pointed down the corridor. Then my heart sank as he explained I needed to go to a completely different building in the hospital complex, and up a couple of floors.
Off I went at an even faster pace and when my destination came into sight I was only a few minutes late. Not that it mattered. The department's entrance door was open but the place was in darkness. Defeated, I collapsed on a bench in the corridor and wondered what to do. After a short period of rest I decided to chance it and cautiously ventured into the gloom of the department's empty reception area. It felt as though I was walking into the neck of a bottle, never to be seen again. But gradually I saw a chink of light behind a closed door at the end of the tunnel. It was hardly welcoming but at least I had arrived.
It seems the 2022 letter was inevitably taking some of the blame for its 2017 predecessor. But it still caused its own share of my impatience and I wanted to get back to those sailors.
My thoughts returned to the coordinated organisation and I had my answer in just a few clicks.
It was a non-NHS business presumably contracted to the Department of Dermatology. Apparently using a computer system called artificial intelligence to process information and do all sorts of clever things, it did so faster than the speed of light. And that was about as far as my knowledge at that time took me. Like most of the complicated things in life, it was known by an acronym. AI. It still is, and whenever I see that in print the first thing I think of is the highway connecting London with Edinburgh that my dad knew as The Great North Road.
My diagnosis and treatment plan had been the work of a metaphorical robot. I was incredibly impressed. I probably drove a car made by robots and my various online orders could easily have been selected by robots. It occurred to me that the potential for helping the NHS deal with overdemand must have been enormous, particularly with dermatology referrals. And so much else.
If this process had any limitations, the need for review by a human eye must have slowed things down. But only a bit. Somewhere, and not necessarily in the UK, there was probably an office the size of a call centre taking care of this side of things. Reviewed at the click of a mouse and your diagnosis was on its way.
The use of AI in healthcare seems to have moved on a lot since 2022 and I think it's now mentioned in NICE guidelines relating to dermatology. I doubt the call centre's ready for closure yet but a fully autonomous approach must surely be very near.
I'm all for it, with one reservation. My last manager before I retired was really into computers. When he was in his office, his head was never out of his desktop. When he was out and about, he was never without his iPad. He even had a side hustle writing software enabling other heads of similar services to benefit from his experience. But I'll never forget the day we were discussing the storage of confidential material and he remarked: "I don't trust computers".
In AI terms, 2022 seems so long ago. Back then, of course, I had absolutely no idea that we were looking at a near future where rogue bots would threaten to clean out our bank accounts and start the world's final war.
