Guernsey Press

How about one eye specialist centre for all the Channel Islands?

GOOD morning to Dr G Oswald who wrote a letter on 16 December 2024 in the Guernsey Press commenting on the current health system. May I thank you for all your effort over many years. May I add to the comments by Dr Oswald.

Published

Current GP activities are going in the near-future to be decimated by artificial intelligence on computer screens asking questions of patients. Much more accurate diagnosis, plus such analysis being pushed into the home. Conclusions from such automation being guided directly to a specialist.

When I was recently diagnosed with cataracts I received a letter stating it would be 12 months before I could receive treatment in Guernsey. As I can afford it and consider health as being more important than wealth, I immediately booked and paid for treatment in the UK.

On my return I wrote a letter directly to most GPs on the island proposing that they form an independent mini-group; and that group arranges for the ‘theory of eye operations’ to be done in Guernsey followed by arranging for follow-on practical operations to be taught in the UK or Guernsey for one year.

This would take two years and at the end the goal would be to have at least nine eye surgeons on-island with almost zero waiting time. This could form a specialist eye centre for all the Channel Islands.

This would provide a new direction for GP’s careers by moving some local GPs away from boils, warts, moles, urine infections, knees, hips and stomachs. They can now operate on eyes and indeed, at vast savings, may still be GPs.

On studying further I realised that the current medical rules requires that all eye surgeons become a GP first, which takes about five years, followed by a two-year eye-operations course, hence it takes seven years to become an eye surgeon.

Just feeling that the Guernsey medical system may not like any new suggestions I then wrote directly under my own name to the UK Minister of Health and the NHS board of directors proposing a new eye surgeon degree course, starting directly after A-levels at 18, finishing at 21 with no course content on other subjects.

This gives three years maximum instead of requiring seven years with the current requirement of being preceded by a five-year GP education. I am in follow-on mode with new suggestions to the UK minister of health under my own name, not involving GBG at all.

I do not believe we need a massive study as to how we fund all Guernsey healthcare. We need to license our medical software package to say 30 small countries at £3m. each giving a revenue of £90m. which both pays for the Guernsey medical software package currently costing £25m., plus a constant revenue cycle as upgrades are completed each few years. An alternative is to rent the software to many countries. Language translators are now accurate and easily available from on-line software. A business person needs to manage this and not a medical person. Guernsey politicians have contacts with the Commonwealth countries.

Rex Ferbrache