Ministerial review to back summary care records

The government is today expected to announce that it will press ahead with plans to begin trials of a national electronic patient record database beginning with summary records.

The government’s patients’ tsar Harry Cayton will today say the system, which will hold records for 50m people in England, is needed to modernise the NHS. Cayton has been heading a ministerial task force set up in the summer to look into the summary care record system. Privacy and consent issues have been high on the group’s agenda.

Patient’s medical details will be automatically uploaded to the system, the only exemptions will be where people can prove to the government rather than their GP that the system will cause them substantial mental distress.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning the health minister in charge, Lord Warner,  said that the trials of the summary care record would be on a similar scale to the electronic emergency care summary already in use by NHS Scotland.

The minister added that the BMA and RCGP had both been involved in the ministerial task force and said the summary care record would, when available, improve patient care.

The BMA says that it supports the concept of integrated electronic patient records, which enable patient data to be shared between health professionals, but says such a system must be based on explicit patient consent. A BMA spokesperson said: "It is BMA policy that patients should give explicit consent before any healthcare data is uploaded."

The summary care record provides the national element of the system of electronic care records supposed to be delivered by the NHS Connecting for Health programme. It will automatically extract summary details, such as allergies and medications, from the far more detailed local care records which will be the principal patient medical record.