Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Norman Lamb laid out his party’s vision for the future of the NHS at a high profile policy speech earlier this month and had some interesting things to say about patient records systems.  Lamb’s vision is of an NHS that empowers individuals, with easy access to one’s health records and a [...]

I don’t know what 2010 holds for you, but it promises to be a big year for electronic patient records. Tuesday saw David Cameron kicking of the pre-election campaign with a speech which, amongst other things, put online records access at the heart of Conservative NHS policy.
But while Cameron’s announcement that patients will “be able [...]

Electronic patient records haven’t had much good press lately. As smarthealthcare’s Patient From Hell notices, there seems to be a general consensus that the ‘Spine,’ which will hold patients’ basic information such as allergies at a national level, is ‘insecure, possibly illegal and crash-prone.’ But there’s less talk of the benefits will electronic patient records [...]

Over at the Guardian’s Smarthealthcare, details of a new announcement by David Cameron may prove concerning for privacy advocates. Against a background of significant criticism of the NHS IT programme by the opposition, the Tory leader has suggested a different approach to the management of our healthcare data. His inspiration is Google Health and Microsoft [...]

The Sunday Herald reports that Scotland could be the first country to have entirely paper-free health records. The device that makes this possible is a ‘mobile clinical assistant (MCR).’ MCRs are essentially hand-held wireless computers which allow staff to move between patients in the ward, accessing and adding to their records without rummaging through paper [...]