Malcolm John Aylett

A committed generalist from his undergraduate days, Malcolm John Aylett served in the army in Hong Kong, attached to the Royal Artillery, then with Shell in Sumatra, followed by a rural idyll with the Tanzanian government, living among the game parks. He settled into family practice in Wiltshire, where he set up projects on spina bifida and breast feeding and introduced peer review into local obstetric practice.1 2 3

But, dismayed at the professions’ retreat from continuing personal care,4 5 from choice in place of birth and of death, and at the increasing industrialisation of medicine, he took on a small single handed practice in the heart of Northumberland’s Cheviot hills. Finding a total absence of practice records, he developed a new system and later became the first practice in the county to have its records fully computerised.6 With his local medical committee, he developed rubella immunity recording.7

He was appointed the health …