IT chaos in healthcare puts British troops' lives at risk

Sunday, 19 Aug, 2018, 11:09

Health Crime

Health Desk--19 August, 2018: It has recently been claimed that British troops are at serious risk due to chaos in IT systems at military surgeries across the country.

Armed forces doctors are said to be routinely locked out of patient records, raising the danger that people could get the wrong drugs or miss vaccines.

The UK's 150,000 full-time members of the army, navy and RAF are cared for by around 500 GPs separately from the NHS.

But senior figures have voiced alarm at the state of the computer systems, with one telling The Times they were 'the biggest threat to patient safety that I have encountered in my 20-year career'.

Colonel Glynn Evans, chairman of the armed forces committee of the British Medical Association (BMA), said NHS surgeries would have been shut down if they experienced the same problems.

Among the problems apparently reported by medics are screens freezing, appointments falling out of systems, and the wrong patient's records popping up on computers.