Maybe it’s because I’ve been sick recently or maybe it’s because I’m sometimes a bit of a cynic that I find the story reported by the The Register somewhat ludicrous. The article is entitled “Got Sky but no computer? Book yourself a doctor’s appointment” and talks about an impending development to allow people to book doctor’s appointments over their tv set top box or mobile device.

Now, let me be clear. I mean the technology sounds great and the application very heart warming and applaudible but the reality? Something else surely.

At present I can’t even get to see a Doctor by using the telephone – instead I have to wait for a return call from something called a Triage nurse. This person phones you back and asks you what’s up. “I’m sick” is presumably the typical response followed by “What are the symptoms?”. “Erm, sickness” after all if I knew all this detail I could look it up myself on Google. “Ok, it sounds like you might be sick, try and get some rest and phone us back if it persists” is presumably the medical establishments equivalent of “switch it off and on again”. Phoning back often gets the busy signal or the automated response “We’re only available for 20 seconds each day so try and be a bit quicker next time”.

As for dropping into the surgery in person – yeah right. People staring at you “do you have an appointment?” is shortly followed by “We don’t have any free slots”, or rather get out please we’re all busy. And as for booking an advance appointment – either “We don’t do advance appointments” or “We have a slot two weeks from today” – but I don’t know if I’ll be sick then?

There used to be a time when if you felt ill you went to the Doctors surgery – waited around for a bit then got to see a real Doctor. Now, it seems the Doctors are getting further and further away. I know they are busy bees and overstretched resources but booking appointments used to be really easy – a pain because it involved a lot of waiting – but easy nonetheless. Now I don’t think any level of ‘automation’ is likely to help – what we need is either more Doctors or less people being sick and more medicines like penicillin available over the counter. If I get tonsilitis a lot and the Doctor always prescribes me the same thing then why can’t I just buy it from Tesco or Asda Walmart and cut out the Doctor altogether?