A night out using the NHS iPhone alcohol app
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in alcohol, NHS, iPhone, Apple on
As the Apple adverts say, you can get an app for everything these days.
The NHS has released an iPhone app to keep track of the amount of alcohol that you are drinking.
Downloading it will allow a user to work out how much alcohol they are consuming, and whether they are drinking too much.
It does sound like a good idea, but I’m not sure how useful this is going to be. For instance, much of the problem that Britain has is over binge drinking, and I’m not totally sure this is going to help this particular issue.
Imagine the scene, Friday night in the pub. You’ve just had a round of drinks - time to get your trusty iPhone app and try to work out how many units you have in your drink.
Can you already see the problem here?
OK - now you’re on your fourth drink. It’s been a pain to do all these calculations - but you’ve just about managed it.
Whoops. You’ve dropped it. It’s logged out of the app before you’ve saved the data from the last drink you’ve had - dammit got to put those details in again - what was it that I was actually drinking?
Hi! What is this you bring me - a shot of sambuca?
Oh crap - I need to put this in my phone. Hang on a second while I work out what this might mean unit size.
Wait a sec! OK, you’ve drunk it. My turn.
One hour later
You what? My iPhone app? What about my iPhone app? Oh that. I can’t be bothered any anymore with it.
Four hours later….
Where’s my iPhone?
So as an app to measure a night’s drinking for many people - it’s not practical. But if you do remember how much you’ve drunk the night before and manage to type details for every day of the week - yeah it could be useful.
The real solution would be an iPhone breathlyser app
I don’t think this is even possible, but what could be really useful is a way that you can breathe on your iPhone, which can detect how much alcohol you have on your breath.
They’ve got that stupid Carling beer drinking app. Surely this won’t be too much of a stretch?
On a serious note though, I do think that it’s good that public sector healthcare is trying to experiment with the technology to improve things for people.
If used properly, the app could be used to help people, but most people already know what moderate drinking is for them - it’s simply the case of following it. Problem is that the Brits don’t really know moderation.
A simple solution would be to do what the continentals do and go with 24 hour drinking, so that people didn’t drink so fast, but this hasn’t really been the biggest success either, normally because nothing ever stays open 24 hours in this country.
So what do you do?
Solutions aren’t easy. But one thing is that nobody forces alcohol into your mouth. It’s a personal choice how much you drink, and in nannying state days, maybe you just got to face the consequences.
It’s nobody’s fault but your own.
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