UK debates outsourcing EHR to Google or Microsoft

Two major opposition political parties in the United Kingdom are in a debate over how to maintain electronic health records, according to a report in The Guardian.

The Conservative Tories would like to encourage patients to use services such as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.

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Another party, the Liberal Democrats, support a $19 billion dollar government plan to build a national patient record database. The plan has been in the works since 2005.

With Google or Microsoft, "people can store their health records securely online; they can show them to whichever doctor they want," David Cameron, the current Tory leader said at a recent conference. "They're in control, not the state."

However, Barry Murphy, head of technology at PricewaterhouseCoopers told ComputerWorld UK that although using Google or Microsoft could save money, it could also lead to complications.

"It would...need to be accompanied by an explicit and implicit trust that the data would not be misused, abused or lost," he said.

The UK's National Health Service has been planning an electronic database for patient records since 1998, according to a study sponsored by the Robert Wood Foundation. The database is expected to see completion in 2014, four years behind schedule.

The Wood Foundation study reported that while there is strong support for EHR throughout the UK, differing viewpoints on how to best implement a nationwide system has resulted in slow progress.