5. We will carry out a transformational redesign of NPfIT and give patients greater control of medical records
With a budget of £12.7 billion, the NHS’s National Programme for IT is the largest civilian IT initiative in the world. After concerns from both the Public Accounts Committee and local NHS Trusts over whether the Programme offers value for money, the debate on the NPfIT came to a head in the Chancellor’s Pre-budget Report when Alistair Darling claimed that the Programme was ‘not essential to the frontline’ and demanded spending cuts of £500 million. Health Ministers, however, insisted that the Programme was already improving patient safety and NHS efficiency, despite agreeing to the Chancellor’s cuts.
In the light of the disarray surrounding the Programme’s purpose and budget, the Conservatives want to assess the value for money of the NPfIT and redefine its scope so that the focus of any ICT deployment is on improving patient care and increasing the productivity of our NHS from the bottom up, not the top-down.
We have made it clear in our response to the independent Review of NHS IT that where appropriate we will localise Labour’s central IT infrastructure so that NHS Trusts and GP commissioners can have a choice of interoperable IT systems which they can tailor to the needs of their local patients.
Local choice will foster innovation and competition at the grass roots and reduce costs. We will bring about choice within a framework of open standards to ensure that each healthcare community can communicate with the rest of the NHS.
Patients are also demanding more choice. Shadow Health Minister Stephen O’Brien has undertaken a consultation which establishes that patients demand access to their medical records and wish to be able to contribute information to them.
Patients need to be able to view and contribute to data that is directly relevant to their healthcare while doctors require reliable data in order to deliver better health outcomes for their patients. IT can deliver a framework which can facilitate this trustful patient-doctor relationship and provide timely information to both parties.
We are committed to using IT to create access to records for patients and the ability to contribute to these records. We want to use IT as a tool to support both the care patients receive from their doctors and the radical improvement of patient’s health and social care outcomes.
