NHS To Spend £1bn On Better Medical Record Access

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The government and NHS chiefs are to spend £1 billion on creating new digital means of storing patient records, which the Department of Health has said will reduce paperwork and red tape and free up more time for patient care.

It plans to create a system to enable everyone to book appointments with GPs and order repeat prescriptions online by March 2015.

In addition to this, online access will make it easier to get to medical records, which means healthcare professionals will be able to reach them in out-of-hours situations. Because they will be able to access them instantly, there will be less time looking for information and more to spend on care.

The scheme is also designed to reduce the kind of errors that can occur if data is lost, such as the wrong prescriptions being given.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said he knew the public could be "sceptical" about new IT systems in the NHS after expensive past failures, but insisted the "technology revolution" can help eliminate many of the current limitations of the system, citing the example of dementia patients turning up at hospitals during the night and nobody being able to access their records until the following morning.

He added that the government is now setting the NHS a target of going paperless by 2018.

Mr Hunt's announcement was welcomed by chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust Dame Julie Moore. She commented: "It's encouraging that the Government are placing such a priority on improving technology in the NHS and backing hospitals to become more hi-tech. Technology has been key to helping us improve safety and drive up standards for patients in Birmingham."

She also said the roll-out of new technology should not be held back by past failings – a reference to the previous government's £11.4 billion IT system project, which the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said should be scrapped in a 2011 report.

It had been designed to give every patient an electronic care record that could be transferred anywhere within the NHS system, but system suppliers Computer Sciences Corporation and BT both failed to deliver this.

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". NHS To Spend £1bn On Better Medical Record Access. September 4, 2012. Storetec.