WRITTEN ON October 28th, 2008 BY Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Contrary to ill-informed reports such as this in today’s news media I read in a tremendously well-informed article in the internal Department of Health news magazine (now published I believe under contract by Dr Foster Ltd) that the NHS e-records programme is making splendid progress:

Connecting for Health, originally launched 2002, has made tremendous strides in the six years since its launch.

Indeed, the system is already now running live in one hospital. It is proving extremely popular with management and Whitehall alike, delivering huge efficiencies and savings. After several internal inquiries valuable lessons are being learned to ensure smoother rollout in future to other facilities around the country.

There’s even a quote from me in the piece, underlining the authenticity of this piece of journalistic research:

“The e-health system is a world first, and parts of it are working wonderfully” said data-sharing Czar Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom. “Other hospital chief executives are already using words like “flawless” as they look forward to making plans for their own implementations. It may prove to be the “magic ingredient” in our data-sharing “ring of soup”. For example, by allowing people’s heath details to be shared with agencies such as DVLA and the TV licensing authority we may deter terrorism, paedophilia, and the abuse of illegal drugs in a hitherto unforeseen manner.”