BMA: poor IT bad for patients

The British Medical Association (BMA) says that poor IT is putting patient lives at risk.

Hospitals urgently need basic technologies such as working printers and mobile phones, as much as the broader long-term schemes of the National Programme, according to a report published by the BMA's junior doctors' committee last week.

NHS Trusts have been reluctant to spend money on IT while they wait for details of the government's five-year £2.3bn plan to create a broadband infrastructure and national electronic prescriptions, bookings and patient records systems.

But hospitals still lack some very basic IT systems and patient care is suffering, says Simon Eccles, joint deputy chairman of the BMA committee.

'If you took the best examples from around the country, you could create a hospital that was just about at the end of the 20th century in IT terms, but you would have to take the very best examples - and we are in the 21st century,' he said.

'We as not asking for a £5bn national IT solution, we are asking for some basic technology. Most of the immediate needs are small - access to handheld computers linked to central control is not challenging technology, it's palm pilots and bluetooth.'

Eccles says top priorities include mobile phones that are safe to use on wards, widespread internet access in hospitals, a guarantee of working computers and working printers, and systems to ensure all clinicians letters, discharge summaries and lab results are accessible electronically.

The government should provide guidance for technology spending before the major National Programme contracts are signed in the autumn, says Eccles.