Children’s database delayed to review security
The government has announced that the £224m children’s database, ContactPoint, will be delayed for five months, so that a full security review can take place, following last week’s HM Revenue and Customs child benefit data loss scandal. The new system, originally due to go live in spring 2008, has been postponed and is now due […]
News
Health records a target for ‘the wicked’
Richard Jeavons, senior responsible owner for service implementation at Connecting for Health has admitted to the Commons Home Affairs Committee that the NHS Care Records Service database is open to misuse by “the wicked”. Given evidence to the committee, as part of their inquiry into ‘A Surveillance Society’, Jeavons, who is also director of IT […]
News
Losing patient data may become a crime
The court should be able to prosecute doctors who have laptops containing unencrypted patient information stolen from their cars, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO has put forward proposals to the Ministry of Justice that will mean that it would be a criminal offence to “knowingly or recklessly” flout data protection rules […]
News
Wait for early SCR results before rollout, says BMA
The British Medical Association (BMA) has told the Department of Health (DH) that it wants to see no further rollout of the Summary Care Record beyond the early adopter sites until the independent evaluation has been completed and ways forward agreed. It says it will advise doctors outside the early adopter primary care trusts (PCTs) […]
News
Millennium problems at Taunton condemned by consultant
Taunton and Somerset NHS Trust have delayed deploying Cerner Millennium software due to ‘severe security problems’, the BMA’s Annual Representative Meeting heard. The software had been due to go live the weekend beginning 29 June. Calling for a public inquiry into the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), David Wrede, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, told the […]
News
BMA votes for non co-operation on central records
Doctors have voted for a public inquiry into NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) and have called on the BMA to advise doctors not to co-operate with the centralised storage of medical records. The National Programme for IT was the subject of strong criticism at the association’s annual representative meeting (ARM) this week where doctors claimed the […]
News
BMA calls for inquiry into NHS Direct referrals
The British Medical Association has called for an inquiry into the NHS’s information and advice service, NHS Direct, claiming it is ‘putting a strain on the system’. The move has been backed by the NHS Alliance and Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel who feel that call handlers are referring too many patients to GPs or […]
News
Ex-Torex chairman may be FSA’s iSoft witness
The continuing investigation by the Financial Services Authority into irregularities uncovered at iSoft, the NHS software supplier, may be about to take a new turn with the former chairman of Torex called as a witness. According to a report in the Times newspaper Chris Moore, the former chairman of Torex at the time of its […]
News
New NHS information sources unveiled
Two new NHS websites designed to improve information for patients have been unveiled. NHS Choices, to be launched this summer, will offer general information with the aim of making “authoritative and high quality information very much simpler for patients, the public and health professionals to use.” A much more specific internet service offering information about […]
News
Paper records a ‘direct factor’ in patient’s death
An independent inquiry into the death of a patient seen by eight different doctors over a bank holiday weekend has concluded that the paper-based system of record keeping used by the out-of-hours service was a direct factor in the patient’s death. Penny Campbell, a journalist, died after a series of doctors from the Camidoc out-of-hours […]
News