Document management will be crucial in helping the NHS meet
its goal of implementing electronic health records, according to
Murray Bywater, managing director of IT healthcare specialist
Silicon Bridge Research.
Speaking at the HC2003 event, Bywater said, "The journey to
fulfilling an NHS vision of electronic health records is going to
be long and arduous, and it has to start from the paper-dominated
world we all inhabit today.
"This is an easy win. You do not have to wait to deliver a perfect
electronic patient record system to start working on document
management."
Electronic health records form a key part of the government's
£2.3bn national programme to overhaul NHS IT. Under the terms of
the strategy, electronic patient records will be implemented in all
primary care trusts and hospitals by December 2007.
Bywater pointed to the challenge the health service faces in
dealing with growing volumes of data, and warned that the amount of
paper produced by the NHS is growing at a substantial rate.
He said, "With an unprecedented injection of funds to support the
modernisation of IT in the NHS, the time is right to consider how
tried and trusted document technologies can be utilised to deliver
early successes.
"If you scan the paper records, they can then be attached in
digital format to the computer record."
Research from document management specialist Elision found that
13.5 billion pieces of paper are currently held as patient records
across primary and secondary care in the NHS.