Summary care records given full go-ahead

All NHS patients in England are to be offered their own electronic medical record after the coalition government concluded that digital summary care records provide vital information to medical staff in emergencies.

Reviews of the summary care records (SCR) project, commissioned by the Department of Health, have concluded that the electronic records help ensure patients receive safe treatment when undergoing emergency or unplanned out-of-hours care.

The Labour government started the SCR scheme with the aim of giving every patient in England an electronic record containing personal and medical data that practitioners anywhere could access. The rollout of the records system was suspended earlier this year over concerns about whether patients understood they would automatically have an SCR created unless they chose to opt out.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Electronic medical records get clean bill of health on silicon.com.