Comment Articles

Look after your heart with more chips

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 26 Feb 2003 17:46 GMT

Growing up is a very grown-up thing to do. You have to start to take things seriously, and accept as truth certain unpleasant facts that once seemed best ignored. The truth of getting older is just no fun -- and that's as true for us as a society as individuals.

The statistics take time to turn into reality. With 11 percent of the worldwide population over 60, a figure that will double over the next 50 years, it doesn't seem to be too much of an issue. But the situation is very different in the Western countries, where low birth rate and excellent healthcare -- two things that might seem purely good -- have combined to fuel a demographic crisis. If you live in Europe or America and were born between 1946 and 1965, then congratulations: you'll be the first generation who'll have to spend more on supporting your parents than you do your children.

That might seem sobering enough, but consider where you'll be in 30 years' time -- or however long it is until you expect to be within hailing distance of the shores of decrepitude. You'll have spent all your money on expensive care for your incredibly ancient parents, your children will have seen which way the wind is blowing, changed their names and fled to Chile, and all you'll have for a lifetime of compassion and thoughtfulness will be an increasingly desperate state healthcare system. Short of turning the whole of the South-West peninsula into a self-governing octogenarian reservation, or making tobacco and alcohol abuse compulsory, it's hard to see how our 20th century model of health provision can cope with what's going to happen in our lifetime.

It's barely coping at the moment. By any standards (except, annoyingly, that of ever having any cash) I'm a fabulously well-off individual, living in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet under a system that spends more than 5 percent of national income on a national health service, free at the point of delivery. But my experience of the state of the GP system in North London is anything but salutary, and private healthcare is way off the list of affordables.

So, what's the answer? This was the subject of part of a keynote session at the 2003 Intel Developer Forum in San Jose. You can probably guess what the answer is -- more chips for a healthier lifestyle. But while it's normally safe to dismiss many predictions from Silicon Valley as being 30 percent marketing, 30 percent wishful thinking and 40 percent shareholder opiates, the Intel picture of the digital home as health tool is already coming true.