Lessons from the central Hampshire electronic health record pilot project: issues of data protection and consent.

One of the key elements of the NHS information strategy of 1998 was the development of electronic patient records. These were expected to be developed within organisations and to be capable of being linked into a patient focused electronic health record, which would form a lifetime record of health and health care for each patient within the NHS. This vision has been modified slightly by updates of the strategy, and the electronic health record has been renamed and redefined as the NHS Care Record Service, but in many ways the original concept has remained the same. The purpose of the electronic health record—now the NHS Care Record Service—is twofold. Firstly, to provide support for the clinical team to help them recall and communicate health status and treatments for patients in a coordinated way, and, secondly, to act as the source of statistical information on types of patients seen and the process and outcomes of their treatment. Although there was much expectation that these goals could be achieved, there was little evidence to prove that this was the case for the original strategy and its subsequent refreshes. For that reason, the NHS Information Authority sponsored 18 pilot projects which ran from April 2000 to March 2003 to test the concepts in several locations.