Key NHS IT Programmes UCL report

The Summary Care Record (SCR) and HealthSpace technologies, introduced in the NHS as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), have so far demonstrated only modest benefits according to the final report of a three-year independent evaluation carried out by UCL researchers. The report's publication coincides with the publication of a research paper based on the findings in the British Medical Journal . The report authors found that while millions of people had received a letter informing them about the programmes, creation of SCRs and HealthSpace accounts was occurring much more slowly than originally planned. Progress in the programmes was delayed by a number of 'wicked' (pervasive, seemingly insoluble) problems, including the difficulty of defining a 'minimal dataset' of key medical data, the huge task of ensuring that GP records were complete and accurate, the need to gain informed consent from 50 million people (many of whom appeared to throw away the letter unread), and the numerous technical and operational challenges associated with uploading data onto the SCR database from local GP records. They also found that whilst many stakeholders shared a broad vision of an efficient, accurate and accessible national electronic record system, making this vision a reality required collaboration across a number of very different worlds ? political, clinical, technical, commercial and personal. Differences in expectations, values and ways of working between these worlds accounted for many of the misunderstandings and frictions occurring at the operational level.