Are computers the way forward for the NHS?

Gone are the days of the travelling doctor who would hop from village to village with his case of weird and wonderful potions and here are the days of over-full wards, over-stretched staff and complete and utter chaos in a world of medicine which readily leads to claims for medical negligence compensation.

The most recent effort to organise the confusion of patients' records and bring the NHS bang up to date is the implementation of an IT upgrade to create an e-records system. The idea behind this is to have patient records logged in one place where paper files cannot be misplaced and access to data about patients' medication and past illnesses, etc is easy.

MPs believe that having an online database system of more than 50 million medical records accessible across the NHS has huge potential to improve quality of care. However, the database has been met with criticism and the likes of Dr Vivienne Nathanson of the British Medical Association (BMA) warn, "Public and professional confidence in the programme is low and its credibility is at stake."

The Health Committee is worried about the security of patients' electronic records, particularly as it is the largest civilian programme of its kind in the world. Part of NHS Connecting for Health', the system is aimed at linking over 30,000 GPs to almost 300 hospitals by 2014, yet there is the potential for hackers to discover valuable information and even find ways to alter data. Security concerns may also fall a bit closer to home, as there will be huge numbers of staff with access to patients' important personal information.

It may that past failures are provoking negative attitudes towards the project. For example, a Liberal Democrat health spokesperson commented, "Confidence in the system will not be boosted by the government's woeful record at handling large scale IT projects."

In addition to concerns about poor planning, the fact that some parts of the project are two years behind schedule means that progression from the old system to the new is taking longer than anticipated.

As well as a centralised e-records system and speedy network links between NHS organisations, the programme will include e-prescriptions. The e-records system is made up of the summary care record, which includes basic information such as current medication, allergies and long-term conditions, and a local detailed care record, which includes any details that are held back.

This should work well by providing instant access to files containing vital information about a patient, where absence of the information might otherwise lead the way to medical negligence. For example, if a doctor was to misplace a patient's file and then hazard a guess as to which treatment would be most suitable for them, they could easily miss vital information about allergies, past conditions and treatments that could protect the patient from sustaining serious personal injury.

However, another downfall of transferring everything to a computer system is maintaining that system. A prestigious workforce of IT support technicians will need to be employed and any shortcoming in the system could take a substantial time to fix, meaning that files could be inaccessible for all that time.

But could this new IT system really help to reduce the number of clinical errors and resulting medical negligence compensation claims? From what we have seen so far there are so many potential issues involved with the new e-record system that it could lead to more problems than it solves. All it takes is for a security breach or a system failure and a whole new batch of compensation claims could be made.

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