Let me first say that I think you are excellent people doing excellent
work on an important area of concern and I appreciate your efforts.
Provisionally, without meeting you, I like you.
Really.
But...
In Issue 30 you give a warning and almost a threat about user
modifications of devices, off-lable use and use of non-medical devices
for medical purposes.
"Do not", you say, "do it". Albeit not in precisely those words.
This isn't actually helpful, nor sensible, nor correct. And it reveals
a failure of thinking which pervades Whitehall actually.
If everything were known, there were an approved procedure for it, and
the supplies to handle it flowed, reliably and on time along with the
knowledge from that fount of all knowledge and instructor of all
doctors, Sir Prof Dr Liam Donaldson CMO etc etc, then you would have a
point.
But out here in the world new things happen. Old things happen in new
ways. Things break, or fail to appear.
And problems need to be solved.
Where do medical devices come from?
Some come from lab work and theory, invented ahead of any need being
noticed. (and some of those are dismissed as being solutions in search
f a profitable problem)
But rather more (unless you care to give a different fractional
breakdown) come from a doctor being faced with a problem, solving it
somehow and then publishing the method or getting a properly engineered
solution built.
So replace that categorical statement of yours, please, with one more in
line with the world and more correct, and harder to write.
Regards
Adrian Midgley
GP, Exeter
cc GP-UK discussion list
Homefield Surgery Heavitree Exeter 01392 214151
|