Patients will consult doctors through a TV screen in 2020

Patients might have their own “health biography” held in an encrypted form on the internet by the year 2020, a new report from the healthcare panel of the Foresight programme says.

The programme, which was set up by the UK Department of Trade and Industry to look at and prepare for the future, has 13 independent panels and brings together business, science, the voluntary sector, and the government.

The healthcare panel has suggested in a new report that, by 2020, patients may be able to consult a “virtual cyber physician” who can be accessed through …