The vast majority (82 per cent) of NHS Trust heads are expecting additional funding from the government in order to become paperless, and over half (60 per cent) expect Whitehall to foot the entire bill.
The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, wants the NHS to be paperless by 2018 in order to save money and streamline services.
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But a new study commissioned by content management software provider Perceptive Software, conducted by research firm Vanson Bourne, has found that there is a disparity between NHS trust heads and other key personnel in reaching that goal.
Two hundred NHS workers including heads of trusts, IT decision-makers and healthcare professionals were interviewed for the research between August and October 2013.
Over half (54 per cent) of the heads of trusts believed that being completely paperless by 2018 is realistic, but less than one-fifth of IT decision-makers and healthcare professionals who responded agreed. A large proportion of those interviewed anticipated that 2021 was more of a realistic goal than 2018, Perceptive Software said.
There were also conflicting views on how far the UK has progressed with the initiative, with NHS heads of trusts believing that an average of over half (58 per cent) of patients have digitalised records, while clinical staff think it's almost two-thirds (65 per cent). However, NHS IT staff believe that only 41 per cent of patients have digitalised records.
All of the heads of NHS trusts believed that digitising medical records would improve patients' faith in the NHS, and almost all NHS workers saw benefits in going paperless. Seven in 10 NHS workers believed that a key benefit was the improvement in the ability to share records, while the majority of frontline staff said that the reduction in storage space, quicker access to data and reduction in the number of lost records were positives.
