Add 3 years to ‘Paperless 2020’: Robert Wachter at The King’s Fund (UK)

The King’s Fund has helpfully published a report on the (duelling?) presentations at last week’s NHS Health and Care Innovation Expo by Robert Wachter, MD, the ‘digital doctor’ (our review of excerpts from his 2015 book here), and Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt on the feasibility of paperless health records. There is plenty of funding (£4.2 billion) for NHS.UK announced earlier this year, but plans are still sketchy. The adoption of the GOV.UK Verify service used in other parts of the UK government is intended to “standardise the process to activate patient accounts without the need for them to visit a GP surgery in person”. NHS is having another crack at an app library, and there was a bit of surprise, according to the writer, that Secretary Hunt said that fitness data will be integrated into NHS patient records. But Dr Wachter cautions that he’s walking back the 2020 date he advocated for full paperless records to 2023. He recognized that implementation in all but the most advanced hospitals (a handful) isn’t feasible. There are too many competing priorities and too little funding (and, this Editor would add, too many HIT threats like hacking and ransomware). Only the most “digitally-sophisticated hospitals” would be invited to be ‘global exemplars’ in exchange for matched funding, in his view. The King’s Fund will be publishing more about this later in September, presumably as a prelude to their upcoming Designing digital services around users’ needs on 6 Oct.  Wachter watch Hat tip to Reader Suzanne Woodman