Doctors don't trust govt. flagship NHS IT system

John Carvel, social affairs editor at The Guardian, reports that doctors have littels faith the the UK government's flagship NHS IT project.

"Health ministers face a crisis of confidence among GPs and hospital consultants over the £6.2bn programme to build the most sophisticated medical IT system in the world, a Guardian poll of more than 1,300 doctors has revealed.

It shows most doctors think the Connnecting for Health programme is a waste of money and only 1% feel it is making good progress. Doctors are concerned that patient confidentiality will be compromised when records are transferred to an electronic system open to clinical staff.

Only a minority of GPs expect to be using the Choose and Book system for making hospital appointments by the end of the year, despite government assurances that it will be available by then in every family doctor's surgery in England.

The survey by the medical pollsters Medix suggests the government has not made sufficient effort to win doctors' support for a scheme that it billed as the biggest civil IT programme in the world."

As a friend of mine used to say, "aye, until the next one", which in this case will be the ID card scheme.