Written question asked by Patsy Calton (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 2 March 2004, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 25 March 2004. It was answered by Lord Hutton of Furness (Labour) on Thursday, 25 March 2004 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Dept of Health

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment has been made of the possibility of the loss of patient data while new IT schemes under the National Programme for IT are being implemented.

Answer: Mrs. Calton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment has been made of the possibility of the loss of patient data while new IT schemes under the National Programme for IT are being implemented. [159141] Mr. Hutton: The national programme for information technology (NpfIT) is implementing a series of IT solutions to improve patient choice and the quality of patient treatment and care. Fundamental to this is the national health service care records service, that will enable patient care information to be accessed at the point of need anywhere in England. In most cases, electronic patient records will be transferred from existing local IT systems and patient administration systems into the nationally available NHS care records service. This is not a new process and occurs at local level every time there is a system refresh or upgrade. Standard IT protocols allow for data to be regressed if problems are encotmtered during transfer to ensure that data is not lost and contracts with suppliers require data back ups to be taken regularly.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 419 c1059-60W;419 c1062W; 159141
Session: 2003-04
Subjects: Databases ICT NHS Patients Medical records NHS care records service
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk