Networking Health

4 Networking health

Main Points:
• How national health provision is being reshaped around the opportunities provided by ICT systems UK’s National Programme for Information Technology.
• The UK’s National Programme for Information Technology
• Private networks concept
• Virtual Private Network and security subsequences
• Availability of network resources
• Confidentiality and ethics of using health information.

4.1 Introduction
• Before looking at the UK,   we should take account of the wider European context.
• The UK’s policy on many issues is often aligned with international policy.
• In the ‘e-Health Action Plan’ (European Commission, 2004) the European Commission called upon its member states
o To produce plans to support a vision of delivering better-quality healthcare to European citizens, with fewer mistakes made and reduced waiting times.
o The plan envisaged that each citizen of the European Union (EU) would carry a smart health card that would uniquely identify them.
o The smart card would provide access to the citizen’s electronic patient record on a database from anywhere within the EU, and allow the citizen to obtain medication from any pharmacy in the EU.
o This EU-wide scheme presupposes that member countries of the European Union have their medical records in electronic form and accessible online, together with there being some form of electronic prescription.

4.2 National Programme for Information Technology
• The UK’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) was initiated in October 2002 and is estimated to take ten years to complete.
• The project encompasses the creation of a database of medical records of all UK citizens, called the Care Records Service.
• The national database of the Care Records Service holds a summary of care and clinical history for each patient. This is known as the ‘spine’.
• Spine includes
o name
o address
o NHS number
o Date of birth
o blood group
o Information about allergies... [continues]

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