Will the director of the UK’s government-sponsored Taskforce 2000 Robin Guenier be one of those who goes down in history as a neurotic scaremonger on the disasters that may befall us at the turn of the century, or as one of those that turned round in January 2000 and said I told you so? Guenier’s latest scare is that as many as 1,500 hospital patients in the UK could die in the first weeks of January 2000 because of computer failures within the National Health Service. He claims the Health Service, well known for being seriously short of funds and overstretched, has neither the resources nor the know-how to deal with the problem alone. The cost to fix the problem is estimated at around 500m pounds, and most National Health Service trusts have made budgetary provision for this work. One problem with the Year 2000 issue is that it is already becoming a cliche, people are bored with hearing about it and reading about it and may be getting complacent. Another problem is that most people assume all the important institutions and businesses which affect their daily lives will have the situation firmly in hand. And then there is the calm, rational side of us all that believes planes falling out the sky and hospital patients dying is just so much mythology. The trouble is, the more one delves into the situation, the more one is tempted to join the scaremongers, and to believe that far from overblowing the situation, we may all, governments, businesses, journalists et al, be seriously underplaying the whole thing, or at best resigning ourselves to the fact that the world simply does not have enough time or resources available to possibly avoid all the pitfalls. Guenier is joined by Professor Mike Smith of the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at London’s St Bartholomew’s Hospital in his criticism of the government’s failure to acknowledge the problems for the Health Service. Professor Smith, a doctor and also a computer expert, believes the government is either being astonishingly complacent or showing a total misunderstanding of the effects Year 2000 will have on the Health Service.
