Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on the rollout of Programme Cortisone.

Programme CORTISONE will provide the Defence Medical Services (DMS) with an up-to-date electronic healthcare information management system to administer the healthcare of the Defence population to maximise fitness for role.

The delivery of Programme CORTISONE will ensure clinicians have the underpinning systems that enable them to focus upon providing the best possible patient care for service personnel to improve patient outcomes and to maximise personnel deployability.

One of the programme’s key drivers is coherence across the breadth of the DMS information and to enable seamless interoperability and connectivity with the NHS structures of the home nations. This will enable the DMS to achieve their clinical outputs in a fully informed, data driven manner.

Programme CORTISONE is currently delivering activity to ensure the stability of current medical information services (DMICP) in parallel with activity to introduce new capabilities. Work is underway to further the development of patient engagement services which are already demonstrating improvements to patient waiting times. The procurement process to deliver the new electronic healthcare information management system is ongoing with a plan to roll this capability over the next two years.