We talk with Rory Cellan-Jones, former Technology correspondent of BBC News and author, about the role of tech in healthcare delivery and his experience as a Parkinson’s sufferer

For anyone unacquainted with Rory Cellan-Jones, he’s the former Technology correspondent of BBC News – where he worked for over 40 years. And he’s also the published author of Dot.Bomb: The Rise and fall of Dot.com Britain, The Secret History of Social Networking, Patiently Absurd (with Mike Kelly) and Always on: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era.

In the following interview, he talks to us about how technology has changed and is changing healthcare delivery, some of his most interesting takeaways after such a long career and what’s life like as a Parkinson’s Disease sufferer.

Here are some short snippets. And, remember, if you want to know more, watch the full interview.

“I have seen the world change radically in my 40 years at the BBC”

“It was as a business correspondent in the mid to late 1990s that I began to get fascinated about what was happening in the world of Technology”

“I was lucky enough to witness a huge transformation. The first big story I did was being present in the room when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. that was the starting gun for what I would define as the smartphone era.”

“I am terribly addicted to my smartphone and to social media”. “Twitter in particular. I still get a lot of value from, as a networking tool, as a newswire, a research tool, but we have seen how easily the world can be poisoned by a few people under the cover of anonymity”

“We can’t uninvent these machines, these networks. so we need to learn to live with them. I think we’re gradually getting a bit better at it, generation by generation.”

“There are two main paths of regulation. There is content regulation, which is incredibly difficult […]. In some ways, a more promising track is competition regulation. basically telling these companies they are big enough and they can’t behave in anti-competitive ways. And they will be massively fined or broken up even if they try to, and stopping them buying other young companies”.

[On Parkinson’s] “Yes, it has slightly changed my lifestyle. I used to run a bit. I can’t run anymore. I get a lot of weakness on one of my sides. My typing is terrible. I’ve got a tremor. I’m 3.5 years into my diagnosis. I’m reasonably cheerful about it. But there’s also a mental impact. I suffer from insomnia, I’ve had depression. but it’s not too bad and it has given me a great interest. I write a lot about technology surrounding Parkinson’s and I’ve met some great people. So, there are some upsides”.

“How radically all sorts of areas of life are being transformed by smartphones and the online, and how slow that is happening in healthcare. I think that is because health takes time.”

“Parkinson’s is really difficult to measure. And if you can’t measure it, you can’t develop the right type of drugs”.

“I completely understand why people are concerned about the privacy of their medical records and concern that big tech is gonna get a hold of them and do bad things. But I also think that panic over these issues has gone so great that is impeding progress”.

“There’s probably too much stress on the dangers and too little on the opportunities available if that data could be shared”.

“Idea to code is quite short. Code to clinic is very long. In other words, it ain’t that difficult for brilliant people to come up with great ideas, but actually putting it into practice in a hospital takes a hell of a lot longer.”

“At the end of my book, I kind of reflect about the good and the bad from the pandemic in terms of technology. The good side being that technology made us able to go on doing things that would have been impossible 20 years ago. The bad thing is what somebody called the ‘infodemic’. There’s a lot more information and data, but a huge battle over what was true and what was false. And in some countries very fake information spread about things like vaccines”.

“For me, what’s been interesting is how much I’ve learnt from other people with my condition. And my wife would probably say the same. We’re moving away from the doctor as the great prophet who passes down information to a more equal relationship with a network of informed people”. “But there is the risk of misinformation too”.

“There’s a battle over authority. And it’s good in some way that they are being challenged. But I feel for them when they get challenged by people who are greatly misinformed”.

“I am trying to write a new book, which is completely about a different topic. It’s about my background. My mother, who brought me up as a single mom, worked for the BBC from 1941 to 1974 as a secretary, had an affair in the late 1960s. And when she died, she left every letter she ever typed as a secretary and every letter she’d ever sent and received to relatives and friends, painting an extraordinary picture of her life and her era. So I’m trying to turn that into a book.”

“I’m quite a sharer and I came out about Parkinson’s because one of my colleagues suggested that it was very obvious that I had a very bad tremor during a live broadcast. And i was very heartened by it. A lot of people find it much more difficult. And they are worried that their employer won’t treat them right and it will generally be damaging. and I can understand that. But you may be surprised by how well people receive openness about these conditions.”