Background to our work
The NHS is changing the way it works. Its vision for the future is to have a more modern, efficient, patient-led health service and to give patients more choice and control over their own health and care.
Its key aims are:
- better, safer care for patients
- enable clinicians to increase efficiency and effectiveness
- and give healthcare professionals access to patient information safely, securely and easily
NHS Connecting for Health is an agency of the Department of Health. It is responsible for all nationally coordinated major IT programmes across the NHS. These include the National Programme for IT and business critical NHS IT systems and services which were formerly delivered by the NHS Information Authority.
The National Programme for IT is connecting more than 8500 general practices and their respective community health services in England to almost 300 hospitals. It is also helping patients to have easier access to their own personal health and care information.
It is doing this by working on a number of new systems and services, including:
- creating an NHS Care Records Service to improve the sharing of patients' records across the NHS with their consent
- making it easier and faster for GPs and other primary care staff to choose and book hospital appointments for patients
- generating, transmitting and dispensing electronic prescriptions
- ensuring that the IT infrastructure can meet NHS needs now and in the future
- allowing x-rays and scans to be captured, viewed and stored digitally
- enabling patients' electronic health records to be transferred directly when they move from one GP practice to another
- linking the NHS with a secure email and directory service
