disConnecting for Health?
The british NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) project started in April 2005, as an agency of the Department of Health, and mainly focused on bringing more IT to the NHS: patient health records, ePrescribing, centrally stored images from patients, fast electronic medical records transition between practices, clinical dashboards for monitorizing patients and online finding for medical services are some of the achievments of NHS CfH.
But is the CfH loosing its drive? According to Suparna Das’s letter published on the recent BMJ edition, “Web 2.0 technology will no doubt disrupt the grand aspirations of the NHS IT project“, due to the fact that the free access to a bundle of Medicine 2.0 techs, such has Google Health, will diverge the attentions of CfH. The Financial Times article NHS records project grinds to halt, states that the “£12bn computer programme designed to give doctors instant access to patients’ records across the country has virtually ground to a halt“, mainly due to the problems faced on implementing the technology hardware on field.
Although the patients’ records are only a part of the CfH action plan, can this compromises a serious and award-winning important project, and therefore tackling the eHealth development in the UK?
I hope they don’t get disconnected…
