Support for PHRs gaining ground in the UK – Cost, Privacy and Ownership Leading Factors

The government in the UK is looking at cost as well and the anticipated cost of expanding the data facilities of the NHS. This report states they should scrap it, but I don’t think that would be the entire answer either, but adding the ability to have their own PHR would certainly help. The NHS has done a lot of things right but has been plagued with data breaches, not break ins, but rather hardware issues with people taking information off the network and losing it, which really is not a good idea anywhere and it happens here too. Support for PHRs is a growing issue as we all would like to see and have some control over our medical records. BD

The government should scrap its £16.5 billion annual expenditure on centralized databases.

These systems often do not work properly and also have serious privacy implications, according to a high level report, according to a new paper from the right-of-centre Centre for Policy Studies.

The report's publication, days after Conservative leader David Cameron launched a scathing attack on the Labour government's databases, is another sign that multi-billion pound IT projects, are likely to become an election battleground.

The new report, It's Ours: Why we, not government, must own our data, argues the government does not understand IT or how to manage IT projects, with 70 percent failing.

"The alternative is to use services such as HealthVault or Google Health to encourage and enable the individual citizen to use to store and analyze their own health records," the report stated.

"This alternative would eliminate the need for the NHS database, and be practically cost-free." It required service oriented architecture and cloud computing environments, the report stated. Such an approach could depend on open data standards, it suggested.

Government IT to be key election battlegound - Network World