Patient revolution

THE news that someone in the National Health Service on November 14th had e-mailed all 1.2m employees, leading the entire system to crash as people clicked “reply all” to complain, will not have surprised those who have followed the woes of IT in the NHS. Efforts to reform the service’s technology, and to manage data generally, have proved as embarrassing as the system itself. “Connecting for Health”, an attempt to impose a national IT system, had to be scrapped in 2013, at a cost of £10bn ($12bn). Care.data, a recent initiative to copy records from local surgeries to a central database, has also been abandoned, wasting £8m. Although people shop and bank on the internet, most do not yet manage their health care online.

Now, in search of efficiencies and realising its approach to IT is floundering, the government is trying to allow a more bottom-up approach. Since last year, all general practitioners (GPs, or family doctors) have been obliged to allow patients to view their medical records online. From 2018 the same will be true for hospital records. Some private software companies are also stepping in to push for change.