During winter months in the UK, there are frequently a large number of people away from their work because of a “bug” or a “virus”. This goes through peaks and troughs, but what is strange is that if you ask “which virus” or “what bug” they have, most sufferers do not know. The doctor told them it was one of these generic situations. In fact this prognosis is a guess. The symptoms “seem” the same as the ones on someone whose cause of illness was actually determined by test.

It is obvious in the year 2015, even years ago, that we can make progress in medicine, in our ability to identify, defeat and make short the wasted hours and days of patients suffering these repeated winter ailments, if testing is used often. If a general practitioner were able to use a simple test, possibly a “scratch” rather than full blood test with a syringe-taken sample, to identify the virus or bug, we would collect data which would add to intelligent diagnosis, and the beginning of detection or prevention of other more serious illnesses.

It is impossible to accept the idea that a cost effective testing process does not exist. It may not be something yet introduced by the National Health Service (NHS) – but let us at least hope that this is something being demanded by that enormous organ.

There is also an economic incentive here – the possible reduction of days of lost productive work freed up by quicker recovery from a KNOWN malady. And, the long term improvement in preventive medicine and sage advice as a result of increased knowledge. Why waste all that raw data by not even gathering it, when it can be turned into actionable, useful data.

More ideas to come about things we could be doing, making it better.
Sometimes it takes a non-immersed-in-the-system, non-specialist, to insist upon progress rather than gargantuan stasis. Progress.
I insist!