Drawing on his work with the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) and the Information and Records Management Society (IRMS), Andrew Graham, business development manager at PFU (EMEA) Limited, offers a realistic view of how Trusts can turn paper archives into accessible digital assets, supporting the wider goals of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan.
NHS Trusts have spent two decades investing heavily in Electronic Patient Record (EPR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. Funding has been committed to digital transformation, software integration, and network infrastructure across acute Trusts, community facilities, and outpatient clinics. Yet, across the health service, a vast proportion of the patient story still lives on paper.
While national targets for EPR implementation have expanded under the government's drive toward a Single Patient Record (SPR), hospital estates continue to run a massive, silent legacy system: paper.
Paper is rarely labelled as a legacy system in NHS IT strategies, yet it is the oldest, most fragmented and most space-consuming infrastructure in the health service. It has no search function, no automated audit trail, no access controls beyond a lock and key, and no ability to be updated in real time by more than one clinician at once.
Log in or register FREE to read the rest
This story is Premium Content and is only available to registered users. Please log in at the top of the page to view the full text.
If you don't already have an account, please register with us completely free of charge.