There’s been a couple of interesting stories on electronic patient records doing the rounds this week which highlight some of their potential – and some of their risks.

The Charm Project, which is beiing run by a coalition of British universities, will be using technology to help people control the amount of exercise they do. Participants will carry devices which monitor how much exercise they are doing and let them know how they compare to the average. The project is based on the fashionable concept of ‘nudges’ which has been developed by American academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They say that people can be led to good behaviour by systems which make the right choices more attractive or more noticable. By harnessing people’s natural competition, the Charm project hopes to prove that nudges can help healthy living.

If this works (and this is only a trial so it’s too early to assume), it could be a really valuable tool for the NHS to help patients look after themselves. Patients could agree a health need with their doctor, record their progress via Healthspace and receive regular encouragment via their mobile or Blackberry.

Also this week, however is some more worrying news. The Information Commissioner, who is charged with overseeing data protection in England, has demanded immediate improvements to the lax treatment of personal data within the NHS. The demand comes hot on the heels of a string of incidents where personal data was lost, including one where Camden Primary Care Trust dumped computers containing medical notes of 2,500 patients in a skip.

While worrying, it’s not clear what this means for the national and regional systems of Electronic Patient Records being introduced into England by Connecting for Health. One on hand, the system will store all records centrally, which will take the responsibility for protecting them partly out of the hands of the NHS trusts who’s failure the Information Commissioner is today criticising. But, of course, individual doctors and nurses will still need to see records and they may have access to many more than they did before – making a potential breach more damaging.

In truth, it’s too early to tell what the impact of the new system will be on patient privacy, or for that matter, on patient power. But as these two stories show, there a going to be real changes.