Sharing patient information electronically throughout NHS: Patients must be involved too

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7415.623

BMJ 2003;327:623 (13 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7415.623

Letter

Sharing patient information electronically throughout NHS

Patients must be involved too

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—We agree with Booth that it is time to involveclinicians in the evolution of shared electronic information.¹We would go further and argue for the involvement of patientsas well. In support of this, we have two points to make, oneideational, one academic.

Firstly, in our study we showed that accuracy will be improvedby reflecting on and discussing summary information with patients.²We also considered what patients had to say about their electronicsummaries. Our study of 19 patients was not designed to providean accurate and representative assessment of the number of errorsthat occur in electronic summaries in primary care. Our reasonto report the figures was to show that there are worrying inaccuracies,not to quantify them. We also believe, from talking to our patients,that they would provide useful and important ideas when consideringthe design of a universal record.

Secondly, . . . [Full text of this article]

Michael Innes, NHS R&D primary care researcher development fellow

Department of Primary Care and General Practice, Medical School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT m.a.innes@bham.ac.uk

Lindsay Ward, general practitioner principal

Stirchley Medical Practice, Stirchley, Telford TF3 1FB