Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Mak Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to ensure the take-up of new technology by the NHS to support effective delivery of its services.

[Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

24. What steps he is taking to ensure the take-up of new technology by the NHS to support effective delivery of its services.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

Using the best technology is good for patients, clinicians and the NHS. Work is under way to drive through the use of new technology, including electronic referrals and electronic prescribing, and to end the painfully slow logins in some trusts.

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I do. It is striking how much clinicians working on the frontline are desperate for improvements in the technology they use. Our announcement over Christmas that we will have a single login, which is seemingly so simple, brought enormous enthusiasm from clinicians who spend hours of their week doing things that most of us can do with the click of a button on the systems we use.

My hon. Friend has been an assiduous campaigner for health investment in Shrewsbury, both physical capital investment and investment in modern technology.

[Alan Mak]

I welcome the phasing out of outdated technologies, such as fax machines, in the NHS. As the switch-off date approaches, what steps is NHS England taking to ensure that patient records can be transferred electronically between primary and secondary healthcare providers?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is spot on. We are driving interoperability so that the right people can see the right records at the right time. We will mandate that technology used in the NHS must allow for such interoperability, and we will set standards.

My hon. Friend started the “axe the fax” campaign, in which I was happy to play my part. Faxes are terrible for efficiency and for data security—even straightforward email is so much better—and we will drive up data security by axing the fax across the NHS.