Lesley Riddoch: Swine flu shows need to tackle digital divide

SWINE FLU in Mexico – it's as if a vengeful God has opted to finish off humanity by pandemic while it reels from the effects of global recession.

This strain of swine flu seems to be transmitted by human, not just animal contact, and affects the relatively young and healthy – not just those with weakened immune systems. All the Mexican authorities can do is distribute breathing masks, close schools, cafes and restaurants and cancel public gatherings.

It must be a terrible time to have hay fever in Mexico City. Going out means courting infection – and the thousands of Mexicans piling into hospital accident and emergency departments are the most likely to develop swine flu, whether they arrived with it or not.

The best way to deal with this national emergency is not possible in Mexico. Nor would it be possible in the UK. We, too, would be forced to charge into surgeries and hospitals, stand in bus queues, walk to work wearing our hopeful, fragile little face masks. We, too, would demand face-to-face diagnosis of our condition, and would risk infecting ourselves and others to get it.

This is because Britain, like Mexico, is not a digital society.

If it was, we would have 100 per cent access to superfast broadband of 20 megabits per second, take-up levels of more than 80 per cent across all sections of society, and public services only available online because of their ease, accuracy and efficiency. We'd spend more on frontline salaries and less on administering queues. We'd see the vulnerable few able to overtake the worried many in the bid for hands-on care. We'd empower citizens to monitor and manage their own chronic conditions. And as a result, in an emergency or pandemic, we'd have relatively rational citizens so accustomed to virtually managed healthcare that a panicked stampede to A&E might not be their automatic response.

Everyday e-healthcare could start tomorrow. Pictures of skin complaints like growths, tumours or worrying rashes could be e-mailed via GPs to the top consultant with a same-day response. No travel, second-best diagnosis or months of waiting and worry. Diabetics could feed in details of glucose levels online and get injection reminders texted to their mobile. People with chronic respiratory problems could monitor lung capacity by blowing into computer-connected measuring devices, triggering doctor alerts if breathing becomes laboured.

With massive public debt for the foreseeable future, this is the best way to revolutionise healthcare, and make massive savings in the delivery of public services. Half of Scotland's hospital beds are occupied by short-stay patients with respiratory problems. Virtual management could free up those beds and make sure patients aren't hospitalised in the first place by catching two buses and a cold in the doctor's waiting room.

If day-to-day health problems are routinely tackled "remotely," emergencies can be triaged virtually, too. If healthcare stays face-to-face, emergencies will create stampedes of people with serious problems and none – all heading for surgeries and hospitals creating queues, confusion and cross-infection.

But here's the rub. Health service managers won't create change until there's a genuinely digital world. That won't happen until politicians aim for more than the two megabits per second announced in the Budget. And that won't happen while broadband looks decidedly optional in the eyes of many voters. Glasgow has the lowest take-up rate in Britain – in the most deprived areas, broadband connection is as low as 17 per cent.

The digital divide won't be tackled until broadband roll-out is dictated by government policy not local demand (perhaps broadband could be installed with insulation?). That will not happen as long as civil servants joke about being Luddites, have secretaries print out e-mails and demand forests are felled to produce leaflets nobody reads.

The take-up of digital TV required sticks and carrots – universal broadband and digital radio will be no different. If Radio 1 switched to DAB tomorrow, for example, that platform would take off and other beleaguered radio stations wouldn't have to keep paying for access to two platforms (FM and digital). Car manufacturers would install digital radios and MP3 player-slots for podcast- listening. Bright young things would tackle any transmission failings. As it is, a new report predicts 50 radio stations will go bust this year.

Britain – like its radio industry – is betwixt and between analogue and digital and everyone's paying for the resulting duplication and inefficiency. In short, unless Castlemilk, Shettleston, and Drumchapel get online, "in-person" services must continue further undermining digital take-up and ruling out savings to the public purse – or services migrate online and the analogue world's excluded become the digital world's dispossessed.

In short, digital switchover is all for one and one for all. Public services won't switch to digital without universal uptake – but universal uptake won't happen until these services switch.

If Stephen Carter had his way, this Catch 22 would end in 2015. By then, the Communications Minister believes, tax returns, car tax applications and non emergency health appointments should all be made online – with no phone, paper or in- person alternatives.

The UK Communications Minister is also the author of Digital Britain, whose final report is published in June. So it's quite possible that chunks of health care, tax collection, lifelong learning, benefit claiming and job-seeking could soon be provided online only.

Will Britain join the rest of the world and go digital in health-improving leaps and money-saving bounds? Or exacerbate existing class barriers with two-tier access to knowledge, care and benefits? The next election must provide Britain with a leader whose vision, social awareness and determination gets the whole of Britain singing from the same digital hymn sheet.