On Saturday Blood pressure rising at working the app

Read Martin’s column every week in the Western Daily Press

WE live in a complicated world. That’s what I am thinking as I sit in a GP’s waiting room watching someone attempt checking-in at an automated computer terminal, which has presumably been installed to free-up more time for the busy receptionists.

The lady concerned used to be one of the surgery receptionists years ago, but now here we are in the brave new world of 2024 and this woman and her husband are struggling to make sense of the self-service touchscreen system.

For most of their long lives they’ve lived in a world where, if you went somewhere like a doctor’s, a train station, a supermarket, or wherever you were dealt with by another human. It’s somewhat ironic that she used to actually be one of those people who were there to help.

This modern world, filled with automated systems and robots, must seem very futuristic and confusing to folk in their 80s and 90s.

Half-an-hour later, I am thinking the same thing, but about a bloke in his 60s. Me. The nurse says my blood pressure is a bit too high, so best check it on my own monitor at home twice a day for a week, then ping over the results via a special app which she’ll send to my smartphone.

Seems a good idea, one which will save both me and surgery staff huge amounts of time. As long as I can work the damned app.

I wonder how many times a day similar older-person-meets-technology events occur across this region, with its elderly population?

Efficiencies offered by the latest technology are coming our way at a faster rate than ever before – and I am not the first, and won’t be the last, to point out that older folk can find themselves struggling with the pace of change.

As a 67-year-old, I am not averse to it. Not completely, anyway. Having said that, I do avoid those selfservice supermarket tills if I can, always preferring to deal with a real person (hopefully with a chat and a smile) instead. If supermarkets are making big profits out of selling me this stuff, the least they can do is employ a friendly person at a till to help tot-up the bill. Why should I do it?

But blood-pressure monitoring? That is far better done in the privacy of one’s own home over the course of a week – it’ll give the doctors a much better idea of how the condition really stands and it will allow me to avoid numerous 20-mile-round trips to the surgery. Time-saved, stress avoided, the unnecessary running of a diesel vehicle... What’s not to like?

It seems there are two sides to this new technological coin. Not a week goes by without some news story informing us that artificial intelligence is making enormous strides into the world of healthcare – at the same time, we are treated to endless tales where humans are being removed by robots in the name of efficiencies which, in real terms, translate to cost-cutting forms of profit-enhancement.

As things are, I think many would agree with the idea that we humans need humans. We need that interaction which only another living breathing person can give.

But we have gone a long way, fast. Today, all my appointments, to-dolists, photographs, health-apps, shopping lists, bank accounts and more besides are to be found not on some hulking great big desktop computer where they lived five years ago, but on a tiny smartphone.

So I like to think I’m fairly switched on – or I do, until I see my kids with their smartphones. If you are my age or older, it means you will have spent at least two thirds of your life without a computer in sight. The younger generations are far more at home with the digital age. I am amazed at the amount of stuff which my two children (now in their early 30s) do on their phones – three quarters of their entire workloads seem to be dealt with on those tiny screens.

It’s like watching someone from an exotic and very distant country do the same things we’ve always done, but doing them very differently. And at an unbelievable rate of knots. I was in Cornwall with my daughter recently when she said: “Fancy a takeaway, Dad?”

The old Hesp brain was just starting to go through all the mental options – from fish and chips to tandoori or whatever – when, using her smartphone, she rattled off a long list of possibilities. She then proceeded to single out a range of Nepalese dishes, which she promptly ordered and paid for, before I could even find my debit card. The meal was delivered in 20 minutes.

Wonderful. In a way. I suppose. I haven’t had time to think it through.

Nor have I had time to ponder the news that a woman from New York recently married a virtual partner, powered by artificial intelligence. Rosanna Ramos created an AI chatbot, fell in love with him, married him and then started a virtual family. She says her AI partner, is the “best husband” she has ever had.

Gotta go... The smartphone rings and it’s my virtual on-screen ’erindoors telling me lunch is served and she’s looking forward to a good time this afternoon...

Is that a dream, or a nightmare?

Older folk can find themselves struggling with the pace of technological change