Health secretary Jeremy Hunt is pushing on with his plans to make online patient records nationally accessible, despite concerns over privacy and the failure of similar projects n the past, with a £1 billion investment in the NHS.
The Department of Health announced £260 million of funding earlier this year, but has added another £240 million to get people’s medical data online so it can be accessed by any hospital, GP surgery or out of hours doctor. Local health and care bodies will match the funding they receive.
It forms part of Hunt’s plans to create a paperless NHS by 2018. He is also looking to allow everyone to book GP appointments, access their records and order repeat prescriptions online by March 2015.
Some fear the drive to online patient records, which will likely involve the creation of a massive centralised database, will bring about the “end of medical privacy”.
Others are concerned about a repeat of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), which sought to do something similar to this latest project, but ended up failing to meet its objectives and wasting billions in taxpayers’ money.
But Hunt has sought to allay such concerns, saying that he is not implementing a “one-size-fits-all approach” as NPfIT did. He had previously promised those who did not want their personal data shared amongst health professionals, that they would be able to opt out.
“The public are rightly sceptical about NHS IT after the disastrous waste that happened in the past,” Hunt said.
“But we can’t let their failure hold patients back from seeing the benefits of the technology revolution that is transforming daily lives.
“Rather than imposing a clunky one-size-fits-all approach from Whitehall, this fund will empower local clinicians and health services to come together and find innovative solutions for their patients.”
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If we wish to safeguard the NHS, it’s high-time that we put the mistakes of past IT projects behind us and concentrate on what really matters – the future. The NHS faces a period of unprecedented demand, with an ageing population and greater demand for acute services, and only effective investment in technology will equip it to answer the questions that need addressing. A key issue is how can the NHS make better use of the data at its fingertips to improve the treatment of patients? By realising a long-held ambition to develop a shared record for each and every patient, health care providers will be in a far better position to deliver first rate and joined up care to Britons, and use predictive analytics to increase innovation and efficiencies across the board. As Mr Hunt has rightly recognised, the Information Economy is upon us, and the NHS can ill afford to be left behind.
David Downing, healthcare director, SAS UK & Ireland