Today's launch of St Helens and Knowsley Informatics Service's medical record digitisation service should prove a welcome development for an NHS suffering space, staff and security problems in its ongoing battle with paper medical record archives.
Dr David Wilson, lead GP at Grove House Practice in Runcorn, Cheshire, told Computing that his office's pilot of the 60p-per-conversion, five year service contract for Lloyd George patient records has been so successful, it could quickly spread across the UK.
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Lloyd George records, which exist for every patient who was born or arrived in the UK before the turn of the century, have not been in active use since 2000. However, GPs are obliged to keep them as they form part of patients’ full health record.
"It could go national. It has the potential. The technology, the infrastructure is there to certainly provide a national system to this legacy paper record," said Wilson.
The service could also replace a worrying gap in data security, with a secure computerised archive proving far preferable to what's historically been in place, he added.
"Only the patients on my list are accessible by my staff," Wilson told Computing. "It's far more secure than them sitting on a rack in a reception that's actually open to the public. When the cleaners are in, and family planning are in in the evening, my record system is completely open."
Wilson added that the papers, which have been "literally collecting dust for all those years" and are deteriorating year on year, can now also be accessed in 60 seconds from his own computer.
"This is the first time I've been able to do it in a timely manner," said Wilson. "It would take two to three hours at least to recover them in the traditional way. I'd need to divert a receptionist from what she was currently doing, taking telephone calls, appointments and prescriptions."
When asked if the NHS has the money to potentially computerise every one of these records for the whole country, a figure which Computing estimated at around £37.5m, Wilson replied "I think it does".
"It's about efficiencies. I'm freeing up at least half to a full time equivalent receptionist one day a week to no longer manage the paper records. And you have to remember that space will be freed up in my reception, which I estimate to be at least 20 square metres. It costs £1,000 a metre to build that space, so that's £20,000 to £30,000 to build the space I've now realised.
"The benefits may not appear on day one, but they're there."
