Our healthcare system has long been put under serious tests and risks a total collapse.

We have been having too many and too often sudden spikes in the number of patients, combined with a shortage of medical supplies and an insufficient number of healthcare workers. All this is placing a massive burden on our healthcare system. A system that is now near collapsing, coming right on the heels of another important and vital institution that is near collapsing, namely our courts.

In many hospital wards and departments, the patient numbers are pushing the doctors and nurses to their limits. Medical supplies are running low as well. A scenario in which the healthcare system is either paralysed or collapsed altogether is now a real possibility.

If this situation persists, the consequences will be severe. Patients receiving treatment too late, or perhaps no treatment at all, could lead to a considerable increase in both mortality and time needed for recovery.

There is no doubt that our health system is in crisis, facing shockwaves and fatigue. One of the current challenges it is facing is the healthcare workforce crisis. The system is underprepared, understaffed and faces underinvestment. Like so many other major national issues, our present health crisis is a ticking time bomb.

So, if our health system continues going to the dogs at the rate it is going, where will we get our care? The answer is bleak. If we are hit with another pandemic, where will the care be delivered, and where will the beds be?

Some weeks ago, Antonio Torchia, the mayor of a small Italian village, Belcastro, issued an ordinance banning its residents from becoming seriously ill.

In the ordinance, the residents of the village are ordered to avoid contracting any illness that may require emergency medical assistance. The move was obviously a humorous provocation, but it is having more of an effect than other major protests elsewhere in Italy in light of its growing national health crisis.

Of course, it is unclear how these new rules will be enforced, if at all.

Perhaps some local mayor might be tempted to issue a similar byelaw to highlight our own growing problems and hardship within our national health system as a result of the Vitals-Steward hospitals deal political scandal.

                                                Electronic tagging legislation reflections

Currently the Electronic Monitoring Bill (No. 240) is being debated and analysed in Parliament. It is hoped that a proper analysis is undertaken by the respective parliamentary committee and that eventually any enactment passed is periodically monitored and reviewed too.

Although  studies in many countries have found that Electronic Monitoring (EM) is a promising tool for reducing recidivism and controlling corrections costs, questions remain about its effectiveness as an alternative to incarceration. In this sense, it is imperative that one has a broad view of the uses, advantages, and disadvantages of EM technologies, as well as possible directions for future research, such as electronic tags being expanded to allow the courts to order their use in cases concerning bail.

The traditional concern with EM, which remains valid today, is whether we will be using technology just because we have it. So we have to be thoughtful about its application. Estonia, for example, despite its effective integration of EM within probation, has not managed to persuade its judges to use monitored sentences as a strategic means of reducing the use of short periods of custody.

Eventually, there will necessarily have to come into play the ethical challenges of the introduction of electronic monitoring.There are, in fact, two distinct areas of ethical deliberation relevant to a debate about EM, the ethics of punishment, control, and care, and the ethics of technological change. EM is a "technocorrectional innovation" that calls for more modern understandings of the acceptability or otherwise of using digital technologies in particular spheres of social life. These latter understandings may be more subliminal or unconscious because in their everyday lives professionals are now immersed in a world of technological gadgetry, our smartphones, laptops and tablets most obviously. This may be less true of poorer offenders. Both these factors make it doubly important that we think more carefully about the ways in which digital technology is being deployed in our societies and the ethics of its use.

Commercial  organizations will inevitably be involved in the provision of EM, if only as providers of technology (hardware and software) and technical support. Will they also be providing monitoring staff and run monitoring centres? And will service delivery itself be left in the hands of any tender-winning commercial provider?

In many respects, the technology has moved faster than the policy and practice. At the end of the day, there might be lurking a real danger of over-reliance on the technology before all the kinks are worked out and policies are fully thought out about how to respond to all of this stuff. But a pilot project is worth launching.