EHI and doctors.net take pulse of NHS IT

NHS IT and alternatives to some or all of the National Programme for IT in the NHS have broken into the non-specialist press in recent weeks.

First, papers speculated that the Conservative Party might be planning to tear up the National Programme for IT in the NHS and to let people use personal health record platforms developed by Microsoft and Google for their own records.

Then the Conservatives published the independent review of NHS IT that they had commissioned from Dr Glyn Hayes and made it clear that they want to tear up much of its central infrastructure and multi-million pound contracts.

Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health also got a mention, although the party is still running a consultation on how much control patients want over their records and how this might be secured.

To gauge reaction to these developments – and to contribute to the debate on personal health records – E-Health Insider has joined forces with doctors.net to run a survey on NPfIT and its future and on whether commercial personal health records would be better than public alternatives.

The survey will run for two weeks and will be reported in EHI, on doctors.net and in other media. You can access the survey using the link below:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB229LQJXWTTQ