Patient confidentiality and privacy continued to trouble those working in and for the NHS in 2009.
The most read report on EHI Primary Care this year was published just 12 days into January, when we covered the loss of a memory stick containing 6,000 prison health records.
Two other reports in the top ten most-read stories also involved data security – a breach of hundreds of records in Hull and a call to scrap the ‘illegal’ NHS patient database.
Other significant primary care IT news featued product launches and alliances among IT suppliers.
The second most read story of the year was that TPP’s SystmOne would become one of CSC’s strategic solutions in the three northern clusters and the third was the unveiling by EMIS of its next generation system, EMIS Web.
Meanwhile, the government battled with swine flu and the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
The Department of Health finally launched the National Pandemic Flu Service in July; the world’s first major distribution of a prescription drug via telephone and the web.
For NHS Connecting for Health, there was good progress on GP2GP record transfer but the pace of implementation was much slower on the Summary Care Record and Release 2 of the Electronic Prescription Service.
Choose and Book was in the news a lot in 2009, with a claim that the e-booking system increases did-not attends attracting particular publicity – although CfH has since cast doubt on the findings.
Finally, a story about a London mental trust saying that patients who wanted to opt out of having an electronic record would not be able to receive care attracted the most comments on EHI Primary Care in 2009.
Most read stories on EHI Primary Care:
Prison health records on lost memory stick
TPP named as CSC strategic solution
Call to scrap ‘illegal’ NHS patient database
Hundreds of records breached in Hull
Map of Medicine use cuts poor referrals
EMIS Web to receive CfH approval by autumn
Cutting the ties to one GP system (by Dr Neil Paul)
EMIS offers online consultation service
A year in review: Read Fiona Barr’s full review of the year in the Comment and Analysis section