New NHS IT system will preserve patient confidentiality
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《英国医生杂志》
New NHS information technology (IT) systems will save lives, the health minister, John Hutton, claimed last week, when he launched a new phase of publicity for the NHS抯 national programme for information technology. He also insisted that only staff with a legitimate relationship to a patient would be able to view their details.
Mr Hutton was adamant that fears that the new systems might cause further delays and complications for staff and patients were misplaced: "This is the biggest civil IT project underway anywhere in the world today. Not everything is going to go smoothly all of the time, and we抮e not going to pretend to the public that it is. But one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS is the quality of its technology. If we don抰 get the technology we need, we won抰 get the service we want to see."
Further objections to the reforms are connected with the protection of personal information. The details of 48 million patients are already kept by the NHS抯 electronic records service, and the possibility that this information could be leaked or used without patients?knowledge has caused concern.
Mr Hutton insisted that access to the system would be limited according to the requirements of the individual member of staff. He also insisted that there would be no relationship between NHS records and the national identity register (the database at the heart of the proposed UK identity card scheme).
The government knows that it will have to work hard to persuade users that new NHS systems can be trusted. The national director of the programme, Richard Granger, also worked on the much maligned computerisation of social security records in the late 1990s, which he insists "apart from initial glitches, has worked well."
Mr Granger argued that the new set-up would be a vast improvement on the paper based system that the service has worked with for all of its 56 year history: "Paper is pretty dangerous for patients. It gets lost, there are prescription errors, or it is not available or readily intelligible when somebody is there making a decision."
The new NHS system has three core components. Firstly, a centralised records service will enable anyone concerned with a patient抯 care to access the necessary demographic and clinical information. Secondly, the choose and book system will allow patients to specify the place and time of their next appointment and will eventually be rolled out to allow patients themselves to use the service via the internet. The third component will be electronic prescriptions. Electronic records and prescriptions could, it is claimed, reduce by 75% the ?40m lost by the NHS each year because of errors in drug doses.
The programme has been awarded ?.3bn ($4.3bn; �3.3bn) in addition to the yearly ?50m that the NHS spends on information technology. The programme has been in development since April 2002, when the Wanless Report laid down new standards for NHS information management. The first phase of the system went live in June 2004, and full integration is expected by December 2010.(London Madeleine Brettingham)
Mr Hutton was adamant that fears that the new systems might cause further delays and complications for staff and patients were misplaced: "This is the biggest civil IT project underway anywhere in the world today. Not everything is going to go smoothly all of the time, and we抮e not going to pretend to the public that it is. But one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS is the quality of its technology. If we don抰 get the technology we need, we won抰 get the service we want to see."
Further objections to the reforms are connected with the protection of personal information. The details of 48 million patients are already kept by the NHS抯 electronic records service, and the possibility that this information could be leaked or used without patients?knowledge has caused concern.
Mr Hutton insisted that access to the system would be limited according to the requirements of the individual member of staff. He also insisted that there would be no relationship between NHS records and the national identity register (the database at the heart of the proposed UK identity card scheme).
The government knows that it will have to work hard to persuade users that new NHS systems can be trusted. The national director of the programme, Richard Granger, also worked on the much maligned computerisation of social security records in the late 1990s, which he insists "apart from initial glitches, has worked well."
Mr Granger argued that the new set-up would be a vast improvement on the paper based system that the service has worked with for all of its 56 year history: "Paper is pretty dangerous for patients. It gets lost, there are prescription errors, or it is not available or readily intelligible when somebody is there making a decision."
The new NHS system has three core components. Firstly, a centralised records service will enable anyone concerned with a patient抯 care to access the necessary demographic and clinical information. Secondly, the choose and book system will allow patients to specify the place and time of their next appointment and will eventually be rolled out to allow patients themselves to use the service via the internet. The third component will be electronic prescriptions. Electronic records and prescriptions could, it is claimed, reduce by 75% the ?40m lost by the NHS each year because of errors in drug doses.
The programme has been awarded ?.3bn ($4.3bn; �3.3bn) in addition to the yearly ?50m that the NHS spends on information technology. The programme has been in development since April 2002, when the Wanless Report laid down new standards for NHS information management. The first phase of the system went live in June 2004, and full integration is expected by December 2010.(London Madeleine Brettingham)