Sacred Medical Records

You are currently spending lorryloads of money creating the ability for clinicians everywhere in the NHS to view your summary care record ("SCR"). Whenever this investment is challenged and for whatever reason, the shroud wavers emerge to say that it will save lives. They give examples of people who would suffer a severe anaphylactic shock if given drugs to which they will react badly. They are correct but that must not be the end of the argument.

Medical records as we maintain them are mostly utterly irrelevant to present or future health care.

Elderly patients have letters in their records telling me that in 1955 they had a baby with a normal delivery at a hospital that long ago became a luxury apartment complex. That baby is now collecting their old age pension.

I know that's an extreme example but very little of what has gone before has any relevance to urgent care or current management.

You are spending billions moving paper and electronic versions of all this medical ephemera between GP practices and from practices to hospitals and back again.

Instead of upgrading the NHS wide area network, let's buy some shredders.