The Future Ai

The National Health Service NHS in the UK employs around 12 million people in England. One in four NHS staff including doctors and nurses are off work with suspected symptoms of COVID-19. Over 2000 of them have already been tested positive and four doctors with a migrant background and nearly half a dozen nurses who are also from migrant background have died.

The British government will announce legislation this Wednesday in the King’s Speech to create a single patient record for every person in England. The new system will require GPs and hospitals to share patient data with each other for the first time making a person’s complete medical history accessible across all healthcare providers. The move is part of a £10 billion digitization program for the NHS.The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting said the single patient record would be a gamechanger that would save lives. He said there was nothing more frustrating for patients than having to repeat their medical history at every appointment. He also highlighted the risks faced by paramedics arriving at emergencies who currently have no access to a patient’s medical records. Streeting said the new system would give NHS staff the ability to see a patient’s full record allowing them to deliver better care faster, as reported by The Guardian.Currently GPs act as data controllers for their patients’ records and individual hospitals manage their own separate systems. The two do not automatically communicate with each other. When a patient is discharged from hospital their GP typically has to wait for a letter sent by email from consultants to find out what happened. Emergency departments cannot see a patient’s GP history. The single patient record is designed to end that fragmentation.The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed the records will be available to clinicians in some parts of the NHS as early as next year starting with maternity and frailty care. Patients will be given audit trails and control over how their data is used. The legislation will sit within a wider health bill that will also abolish NHS England by 2027.GP leaders have raised concerns about liability for errors that could be introduced into records by other healthcare providers. Without legal clarity and formal indemnity protections they have warned that data sharing could be slowed rather than accelerated.The British Medical Association has previously called for doctors to retain control of GP data within the single patient record system rather than handing control to the Department of Health. Its GP committee warned that removing data control from GPs would damage patient trust and risk confidentiality.