Health: Electronic Patient Records

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend makes an important point about the use of data. There is a balance to be struck. The first point to be made about the use of data is that patients need to be part of any decision about sharing them. In 2012, the NHS Future Forum published an independent report on this issue and used the phrase,

“No decision about me without me”,


to describe the role of patients. There is of course a need to share data among clinicians, particularly when they treat a patient themselves. There can also be wider concerns: for example, in a public health pandemic or some such incident data would need to be shared more widely. But that can be done only with patients being informed and offering their consent.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, is there not a problem here? If all the focus is at national level, that usually takes a long time and it inhibits local progress. Does the Minister agree that one of the great challenges is being able to share information between the health service and social care if integrated care, particularly for older people who are discharged from hospital, is to be delivered? Is any progress being made in getting full integration at local level, which is clearly a challenging area?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The truth is that there is patchy use of data within the health service. Practically all GPs now offer electronic patient records and something like 9 million people have registered to make appointments online. But it is not at the same level in acute trusts, mental health trusts and so on; there is still paper usage. The intention has been to have a paperless NHS by 2020. This means that with patient consent based around clinical need we would have the ability to share data around the patient pathway, whatever part of the health service they were in.