How Digital Is It ?

I started to tweet recently about Digital experiences, I used the #howdigitialisit tag based on coming into contact with various businesses.

This is a very quick blog today but one I was complelled to issue out of amusement, I wasn't sure if I was Digitally frustrated at the time but the quite retro nature of the incident sort of tickled me.

My wife has been through a rough time recently and will continue to be for another 2-3 months, we take our health for granted until it starts to fail us. So as a consequence we've seen the inside of too many health places recently. We've had ShropDoc on call doctors out to the house, paramedics too. We've been to the GPs numerous times, 2 NHS hospitals and 1 private hospital.

What has been the most digital part of the experiences ? The ANPR system for car park payments, much better than the need to have hard cash on you when you exit the house unplanned at 2am........"where does it hurt darling, yes I've got your medication and some fresh underwear. You haven't got £2 in coins have you ?"

ShropDoc and the Paramedics both did their job with varying degrees of bedside manner....OK sofa side if I'm going to be accurate. What dismayed me was both of them getting out an A3 pad to record stats and information for the visit along with medications prescribed and then handing me a carbon copy at the end. Seems my time machine is working and I have gone back in time or these guys haven't evolved, sad but that wasn't the retro experience I was waiting or wantiat to describe.

No the retro experience came in the Apley building at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford this week. As Nic and I sat in the waiting room busying ourselves in our natural manners (Nic with a magazine from the table that was probably 12 months old and me on Email and Twitter) my subconscious alerted me to a familiar noise. You have probably had that feeling, you go all squirrel like, you freeze what you are doing look up and slowly look around the room for the noise whilst frantically trying to figure out what the familiar noise is.

After about 5 seconds in squirrel mode it hit me, it was the sound of a 56kbps modem being booted up. Wow, I then tried to figure out when the last time was that I heard one of them. I guess it was nigh on 12 years ago......it's another of those sounds my kids will never know.

I sat back with a grin on my face then I had the natural follow up thought. We're just about to go and talk about a review of the x-ray and MRI scans Nic had and they are booting up a 56kbps modem. "I think we might be in for quite a await darling" 😂

Well we didn't have to wait too long but quite interestingly the consultant didn't offer go talk us through the x-rays or MRI scans on the screen and he professed to not having seen them. I was going about to offer a mildly sarcastic "no shit Sherlock, you'd need 3 days to download PACS images over that modem" but I decided better of it.

Who says you don't grow up and mature in your 40's 😂