Flibble21

As a teacher that uses chalk and white boards I can heartily tell you that chalk sucks. It's messy on your hands and cloths, it breaks and is difficult to erase from the board. White board markers are so much nicer. The criticisms of markers seem to be, from the article:

You can't tell when they will run out. This is not true, they fade out not stop suddenly. Also, it is always possible to carry a spare marker or two.

Hand writing is worse with markers. Then look at what you've written and make it better.

White boards deteriorate faster. I currently use white boards that are a sheet of reinforced glass pained white on the reverse face. They've been installed for 10 years and look the same as they the day there were installed.

Permanent markers destroy a whiteboard. The glass boards make it a little bit of work but it instant destruction.

Chalk is less damaging to the environment than marker pens. This is true but can be mitigated with re-fallible pens.

Special "chemicals" are needed to clean a white board. The chemical that I use is water in order to make the cleaning rag damp. The same as I use for chalk.

I have a friend that has worked on this project for over a very long time and the issue is not that the UK tried to implement EHR records from scratch but rather that GPs (General Practitioner, think local doctors surgeries) had mostly all implemented EHR systems already. The issue is that these systems are created by several (6-8 if memory serves) different private companies and the UK Government can't force the GP to change or adopt a standard system.

The different GP EHR systems record patient information in their own ways. Think of a database entry for chemo medication, one EHR provider having a db column labeled "Drug X" with the patient entry listed as "Yes" with separate columns for dosage, frequency etc. Another will list the drug, dosage and frequency in the same field. Even if they have the same column e.g. frequency, different EHR's may list "5d" or "5 Days". There are also spelling errors, doctor's personal shorthand abbreviations etc.

The problem is that the UK interoperability system has is to implement a safe translation layer that will allow records to be transmitted between these systems that doesn't kill anyone. The astonishing amount of different types of information that are used and all the oversight needed to ensure that information is accurately transferred has made this project way more costly and time consuming that originally thought.

There is, of course, waste and profiteering, both internally to the Government project (huge contract salaries) and also with the private EHR companies (overruns and re-builds are all handsomely paid for).

You're missing one of the very important aspects of a RPI is that it's cheap and accessible. Many countries around the world, particularly the poorer ones, don't have Amazon or ready cheap access to SSDs. What they do have access to is phone micro SD cards in adaptors. An 8 or 16GB card is plenty for a computer lab and is affordable and accessible.