Information Commissioner backs electronic care records
The UK’s Information Commissioner has issued new guidance to members of the public on the government’s plans to develop a national system of electronic care records, based on enquiries that have been received. Overall the Commissioner backs plans for a national system of summary records but says he plans to keep a close eye on how […]
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Granger promises summary care record pilots by Easter
Connecting for Health’s chief executive, Richard Granger, has revealed that the first pilots of the national summary care record project should be ready to begin by Easter. Speaking at the London Telehealth Symposium yesterday, Granger said that the delayed project summary record will be ready to begin rollout to initial pilot trusts by Easter. Dr […]
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Call for pay to discuss records with patients
GP representatives are calling for GP practices to be paid for the work involved in discussing records with patients before they are uploaded to the spine. The British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee has told GPs that it is continuing to back an opt-in consent model for the Summary Care Record but is aware that […]
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2006 – a curate’s egg for Connecting for Health
E-Health Insider cuts through the statistics to offer a snapshot of progress on ongoing efforts to digitise the NHS in England. Whatever happened to the NHS Care Record Service? 2006 may well be seen as the year Connecting for Health (CfH) and its prime contractors failed to deliver on their promise of next generation integrated […]
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Patients to be able to veto spine uploads
Health minister Lord Warner yesterday announced a significant u-turn in government policy on patient’s details being automatically loaded onto the NHS spine summary care record, stating that patients will now have the right to request their details not be uploaded. Lord Warner announced the concession at a press conference yesterday to announce the publication of […]
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Opt-out consent model to be kept for SCR
The government is to stick to its plan that patients must opt-out of the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS), although some patients will now get the chance to view their record online before information is uploaded for sharing. The decision appears to have won the backing of the British Medical Association and the Royal College […]
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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 […]
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Revised plan for ‘sealed envelopes’ published
Sealed envelopes are likely to become available from 2008/9, according to the latest briefing paper from NHS Connecting for Health which outlines plans to allow patients to make clinical information invisible if they choose. The revised plans for sealed envelopes mean that patients can opt to have sensitive information “sealed” or “sealed and locked” from […]
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Concern over slow progress in acute sector
A board paper written for the largest NHS trust in England says that its region of the National Programme for IT does not have a roadmap for delivering an electronic care record. The report, submitted to Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, by director of informatics, Brian Derry and his deputy, Alastair Cartwright, in October says: […]
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DH rejects patient opt-out requests
The Department of Health has rejected patients’ requests to stop their information being uploaded to the NHS data spine. On Friday the DH wrote to patients who had sent in a coupon from the Guardian newspaper requesting to opt-out telling them that would not be able to do. The eight page letter from the DH […]
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