Happy Sunday morning to you all! Grab your tea and hit the links! (No, I’m not talking about golf…)

* ALDE wants patients to have access to medical care outside their home country (if in EU). Admirable. How will countries co-operate in providing patient records if this happens?

* Via Kable: Citizens are being excluded from e-government services because they don’t have the right software, an MP has warned. Liberal Democrat MP Dr John Pugh believes that the government is unwittingly creating a Microsoft monopoly in its delivery of online services because, in many cases, the public can only access them by using the US company’s Windows software. Speaking to GC News on 10 October 2007, Dr Pugh said: “Why can a Mac user not be able to apply for benefits online?”
“If a company built a road down which only a Ford car could go, there would be an outcry.”

* Also via Kable: “Patients and clinicians will be involved in an assessment of how access control technology can help the health service in Wales. Informing Healthcare, the multi-million pound programme to modernise health services across Wales, is to trial gateway technology to support its online patient services. ‘The aim is find out whether it can be used to ensure that the patient is ‘authenticated’ in both a secure and usable way so that they can access personal health services online,’ a spokesperson for Informing Healthcare told GC News on 11 October 2007.” Hope they report the results promptly.

* Kable again: “Passengers entering the UK are having their fingerprints checked against government records in a new trial at London’s Gatwick airport. The BioDev trial at Gatwick’s north terminal is part of a complete overhaul of the UK’s border security systems. Compulsory fingerprinting is now part of the UK visa application process in more than 100 countries worldwide.”

More later, I hope. Now back to your regularly scheduled orange juice.