Tales from the Front Line: Taking Notes Twice

Nothing to see, as nothing has changed

“Excuse me, before you go, could you make some notes,” says the nurse.

“Yes, I’ll do them on my laptop, which will go to the GP,” I reply.

“What system is yours,” I ask.

“EMIS,” says the nurse.

“Ah, our system is Adastra; I’ll have to do the notes on your system as well, then.”

The approach to NHS IT in the health system is archaic and chaotic.

A 2019 analysis showed that of 117 trusts using electronic records, 92 employed one of 21 different commercially available systems, and 12 used multiple systems within the same hospital. One in ten patients attended a hospital using a health record system different from their previous hospital attendance. The IT can be so outdated that some Trust staff have to log in to various systems up to 15 times to do their jobs.

For all the talk of AI improving the landscape, the problem is often outdated technology slowing down the day-to-day job.

According to a BMA survey, roughly 80% of doctors think the number of different IT systems used within the NHS is a …