Green Light For £260 Million Technology Fund To Make The NHS Safer

Doctors and nurses are to get better information about patients so people get safer care thanks to a new £260 million NHS technology fund, announced by NHS England today.

The fund will be available to NHS providers to support the move from paper-based systems for patient notes and prescriptions to integrated electronic care records and the development of e-prescribing and e-referral systems.

This will help stop the situation where patients find themselves having to repeat their medical history over and over again – sometimes in the same hospital – because the hospital does not have access to their records.

Studies show electronic prescribing can cut prescription errors – which can be present in as many as 8% of hospital prescriptions – by up to 50%.