Patients to access NHS records via web by 2015 The Department of Health will develop a plan to allow patients to access their electronic medical records online by the end of this Parliament. This emerged after Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, confirmed he had accepted all of the recommendations (PDF) of the NHS Future Forum. The NHS Future Forum says the plan should …
It's not so much that we want our details on-line or even computerised. It's that we want our records updated when we see the doc (not two weeks later, when he's forgotten the details), and if we want to see our records, we want to see all of our records, not some crappy summary written by a tired doc who's been coerced into doing it because no one else can be arsed.
It oughtn't be too hard for me to pop down the doc's surgery, or the hospital in which I got treated and get a photocopy of everything in my file at that physical location. For whatever reason though, it's as good as impossible to actually do. I'm not so bothered about getting it online - on paper would be plenty!
You already have the legal right to see and review your medical records, under the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 and of course DPA98.
Hospitals destroy most records after a set period of time, except for certain types of treatment, e.g. cancer
Your GP records should follow you, and be kept up to date (although paper records do get lost in transit from time to time, the current electronic system should eliminate this)
Erm, we are talking about electronic patient records, so you have a spine held record. Which is never culled, just updated and refined. So anything which has gone onto the central record is static until more relavent information is applied.
You'll find that most hospitals only throw out the chaff, like admin docs, copy letters, appointment issues notifcations, again, unless they use Lorenzo, then it is there unless it is removed.
I'm telling you now, there is no way the full record will ever be able to be fully available to netizens.
Because what patients *really* need is to see every little thing a doctor has written about their condition, then obsess over the tiniest details. For example, a hearing test shows a slight dip of 20dB at point. The experienced technician knows to write this off as insignificant, the patient on the other hand will trawl through wikipedia and a dozen other internet sites and convince themselves they have Imploding Ear Sydrome.
I agree that a close eye needs to be kept on doctors and other medical professionals, and I say this as one. However, that eye needs to be one that knows what it's looking at.
Good for men whose wives are getting the pill from their company doctor, and their husbands don't know about it, so they can find out, and sort her out.
Or Muslim men who want to see if their daughter's had sex with a Jew, so they can restore their family honour.
All very tongue in cheek, natch... but it will be interesting to see in Hello, which royals have had illegitimate children, which film stars have had the clap, and which male stars have had treatment for rectal collapse, without Rupert Murdoch having to get involved.
Records have been available to patients suffering from diabetes in a certain Trust for a while through a web portal!
We (sorry anon as I cant say who, although as el reg know its me!) have been working on making this facility available for a while now as an add-on to our current software.
Some GP clinical systems also have this available to patients as well....
Has disconnected itself entirely from the interweb. That way, nothing can leak out and no one can sneak in.
It's a bit of a PITA because it used to be possible to renew prescriptions online and now we have to take the script into the surgery, but now I know the daily hail isn't going to be looking up the gory details of my piles operation !
Putting any private information online is inviting the great unwashed to break in. I believe there are plans afoot for the DVLA to make driving licence details available for employers and hire companies. Time to set up my own investigation agency.
Sounds like an invitation for Russian hackers and whathaveyou with the net effect of making the information available to world+dog (for a small fee, perhaps). The nasty thing is that once something has been leaked it stays leaked, forever. Hence I'd much rather have these systems strictly isolated. Having a standard format for the info would make sense though so that the same could be, say, burned to a CD (*), sent as a registered, signed-for letter, added to the database and the CD dropped to the shredder when done. This on a per-patient basis when requested by the patient in writing.
(*) encrypted with the public key of the receiving GP / hospital / ...
Remote booking of appointments? Our Group practice (a monopoly in this area) is still clinging to its 08444 number despite this being deemed unsuitable by Government, The are very reluctant to give up their share of the NHS entry fee they have created (appointments can only be made by phone between 8 and 9 leading to huge long queues).
The LHB seem unconcerned and have fudged the assessment they were supposed to do early last year claiming that Mobiles and bundled call packages fall outside of consideration
It seems each time they "improve" the service it gets worse or costs us something. Im sure all of this will rain yet more finds away from treatment and into the pockets of the usual multinational suspects who will produce a system that never quite works and costs us a whole lot more than was envisaged.
As per usual with this sort of story - which records ?
Your demographic details from the spine ?
Your medical record held at the GP practice ?
Your emergency summary held in "the cloud" ?
Your secondary care records held at the hospital ?
Your records held in Scotland/Wales/NI which operate different systems/technologies ?
Have you een the time taken to log into the spine lately? It's fine for a webpage to take 10 seconds to lead. But a GP has ten minutes to see you, and of that, 5 minutes is to listen. 3 minutes to type. 1 minute to decide. 1 minute to tell you. 1 minute to get the old lady out the door before she manages to get her THIRD medical condition into one consultation. That's....oh. So, anoif 230 million people (healthy) are obsessively checking their medical records online, and the records take 30 seconds to load, what it actually means is that the ill people get no diagnosis, and they get sick and die. No decision about me, until the hypochondriacs have finished DDOS'ing. Oh, and by the way, I do NOT want to know the 23 things that might have been wrong with me, and after careful consideration by a professional turned out not to be. All I want, is that the professional gets as much time as they can, to make a careful judgement and do their best. Because really that's all any human being ever does.
I can see the value in my medical records being 'in the cloud' so that if i end up unconscious in A&E the doctors there at least know what my medical condition is called, even if they don't know what it means (though, in fairness, they were honest about their ignorance and asked those with me for info). However, I'm not going to access my medical records on the web, in the same way as i don't access my bank on the web (paranoid, i know). As such, I'm hoping that the database running this will be a copy of the one that the NHS is using internally, and that there'll be some way of opting out of being copied over in to it. It would seem unwise to run a security risk, however small, for no gain.
For non-celebs IMO the main security and confidentiality risk faced by patients is being forced, cajoled or fooled into disclosing records to people who do not have their best interests at heart.
Dodgy employer - "If you keep throwing sickies you're going to have to prove you're really sick."
Jealous partner - "If you really loved me you'd show me your medical record"
Bullying parent - "You're on the pill you little sl*t. If not show me your medical records"
Impatient heir [How much bloody longer has granny got?] "Granny - we need your medical record login or you won't get your pension"
Electronic voting over the web is a crap concept for the same reason: only we never hear it!
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