Summary
One of the main aims of the 10-year National Programme for
Information Technology in England is implementing Electronic Patient Records
(EPR). The NHS Care Records Service creates two separate EPR systems: a
national Summary Care Record, containing basic information, and local Detailed
Care Records, containing more comprehensive clinical information.
This
Report
‘The
Electronic Patient Record’ (HC 422-I) examines the implementation of the
scheme.
The Committee’s findings include:
- A lack of
clarity about what information will be contained
- Consent arrangements
for creating and adding information have not been well communicated to patients
or clinicians
- Important components have not yet been completed
- Maintaining security is a serious challenge.
The Detailed Care
Records systems are to replace local IT systems across the NHS, but the report
points to delays in trials and implementation, and difficulties in establishing
the level of information sharing that will be possible or how sophisticated
local IT applications will be.
The Committee finds that there has been a
lack of local involvement in delivering the project, with hospitals often left
out of negotiations with suppliers, leading to a lack of enthusiasm for
deploying the systems.
The Committee recommends the delivering body,
Connecting for Health, focuses on setting and ensuring compliance with
technical and clinical standards for NHS IT systems, allowing local users the
final say over which system is procured and how it is implemented.
The
Report also highlights success in agreeing on a universal coding language for
the NHS and a single unique patient identifier, and remarks that the potential
for health research is significant.
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