Nearly two thirds of family physicians in England plan to boycott the government’s attempt to create a database of 50 million National Health Service patients’ electronic health records, according to a poll by Medix, a health online research organization, the Guardian Unlimited reports. More than 1,000 family physicians were polled about the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The patient health record database is a £12.4 billion (or $25.6 billion) project to modernize the NHS’ IT systems. Due to fear that sensitive personal data could be stolen by hackers and blackmailers, 59% of the General Practice physicians polled said that they would not upload any record without the patient’s specific consent. This is an increase from the 38% of GPs who were polled last year who said that they would not put their patients’ health records on the database without consent. The increased skepticism about the online security of confidential patient records is occurring despite campaigning by the NHS’s IT procurement agency to persuade doctors that the “summary care record” plan would save lives. The Medix poll also found that 70% of GP’s and hospital doctors do not think that the program is a good use of NHS resources and only 1% rate its progress as good or excellent. Three-quarters of those polled said they wanted an independent review before futher monies were committed to the program. Despite negative vibes from physicians, a spokesman for the procurement agency did say that patients whose records were added to the database thought the program had a potential for improving safety, according to the Guardian article.

Further information about the program can be found at Connecting for Health’s website. It will be interesting to see how this program progresses and whether or not confidentiality is compromised and/or patients’ lives really are saved.

Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
on January 16, 2008 - 11:44 am

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