Today, I stumbled upon an iPhone and iPad App that offered guidance on health and safety in the social care sector.

With some authority, the App presents a well-structured short guide to Health & Safety for Social Service Workers (An Induction Guide) . It was first published in May 2013 on behalf of Scottish Social Services Council, so it is really new and hot off the press.

It covers an interesting range of basics, minimising risks, monitoring and maintaining safety, dealing with hazards, reporting & recording etc, and touches on waste management in it’s small Q&A section.

One might expect that the data it presents would be checked, and checked again. and that any errors would be corrected. Once released for public consumption – it is provided free of charge – users might contact the authors by email to identify ant last errors that slipped past the eagle eye of proof-readers.

But no. In a simple self-test section, the question concerning the colour coding for wastes that contain cytotoxic or cytostatic medicinal waste is identified offers four choices, yellow, orange, purple and yellow/black.

And the answer?  Regrettably, purple was not identified correctly, as it should have been, but instead an orange sack was given as appropriate for cytotoxics.

There is no need to be unduly critical of this particular App; an error report has been sent.

But as the smartphone revolution rolls on and we live our lives in a digital age, one wonders just how much blind faith is placed in the information provided in the wide rage of Apps now available?