Club Meeting

On Thursday 6th of May, the Rotary Club of South Queensferry's virtual meeting welcomed speakers Gordon Paterson and Lynne Nelson from the Rotary E Club Southern Scotland. The e club originated as the Rotary Club of Edinburgh Park, recruiting its members from the business community in the rapidly expanding office development in western Edinburgh. With dwindling membership, however, they began the first Zoom club long before the pandemic. They now have members in Germany and the USA. Their president elect is currently working in Australia. They have also started a Global Interact E Club in Germany.

Gordon and Lynne's talk was about Bert's Alerts and how Rotary can spread the word and encourage people to join this innovative project which is still in development. Bert's Alerts is a system that allows emergency services to access the medical records and personal information, like next of kin and current medication, of people who are involved in accidents or are suddenly taken ill. For an annual fee of £20, people who sign up through the website are issued with a card from which the emergency services can access the details through an app. As the project is being promoted through Rotary, a proportion of the fee goes to Dodi Weir's motor neurone disease charity. The talk prompted many questions from members, several of which concerned security of the system. Gordon and Lynne said they'd report back once they had consulted the team working on the project. Within days they were able to report that information about the project had been sent to the Air Ambulance, the Scottish Ambulance Service, Police Scotland and several other emergency organisations. Of course, uptake depends on the details being passed down the chain of command over which they have no control. As for security, the card must be within inches of the scanner to read the information - a similar distance as paying by debit card at a check-out. Individuals can choose whether or not they want to accept the minimal risk.

Gordon and Lynne were introduced by Jim McCulloch. Neil McKinlay gave the vote of thanks.