Health department is to shut down patient records site that was too hard to use

The Department of Health in England is to close a patient records website that was judged “too difficult” to use by one of the government’s leading health technology experts.

Charles Gutteridge, the national clinical director for informatics, told a conference that the NHS’s online personal health organiser HealthSpace (www.healthspace.nhs.uk) would close within a year.

HealthSpace was set up in November 2003 to help patients store and keep a track of their personal health and medication details; exchange information with clinicians; and, from October 2007, access their NHS summary care records.

Gutteridge referred to problems …