Only a fifth of doctors believe that a national electronic system for storing patients’ records will be secure, a poll for The Times has shown.

More than three quarters are either “not confident” that data will be safe or “very worried” that data will leak once the £20 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is running. Asked how well they thought that local NHS organisations would be able to maintain the privacy of data, only 4 per cent said very well. The majority, 57 per cent, said quite or very poorly.

The poll was carried out online over Christmas. In general, the GPs, who have the greater experience of IT systems, are more sceptical than the consultants. Asked the question “Do the benefits of electronic patient records outweigh the risks?” a narrow majority of all doctors polled said no. Among GPs, the gap was much wider, with almost two thirds doubting that the benefits would outweigh the risks.

The NPfIT is one of the largest IT systems ever attempted. When complete it should store more than 50 million patient records and be accessible to doctors anywhere in the NHS.

The system also offers other advantages, including electronic prescribing and the rapid transmission of X-rays between doctors. But achieving its ambitious targets is proving tricky and it is years behind schedule.

When it was announced, little effort was made to consult the medical profession or the public. The Government is now paying the price, with scepticism in the profession and evidence that some patients will fight to keep their medical records off the system.

Admissions by the Government that data on millions of families had been lost by Revenue & Customs, and that nine NHS trusts had lost patient data, have sharpened the security.

The poll, carried out for The Times by Doctors.net.uk, shows that while doctors see virtues in centralised electronic records they are also well aware of the risks. More than two thirds (70 per cent) agree that such records will improve patient care. Consultants are more strongly in favour than GPs, with 78 per cent agreeing or strongly agreeing that care will be improved, against 53 per cent of GPs. There were 640 respondents to the question about database security.

“The poll shows big cultural differences between primary and secondary care,” said Shaibal Roy, operations director of Doctors.net.uk, which has more than 151,000 doctors registered. “GPs have had electronic records for two decades, and the key difference this poll shows is that doctors more experienced with IT are more concerned about it. They all agree that electronic records in GPs’ surgeries are important, but do we need to share them?”

The poll also asked doctors if they thought that a patient’s record should be accessible to private healthcare providers. They were evenly divided, 43 per cent saying that they should and 41 per cent that they should not. Asked if they thought that the medical profession was prepared for the transition to electronic records, only 29 per cent said they thought it was, against 66 per cent who thought it was not.

Feelings were mixed over the extent to which patients should be able to control access to all, or part, of their records. By a majority of 54 per cent to 40 per cent, doctors agreed that patients should be able to limit access to parts of their records. But more than two thirds were against patients having a veto over their entire record.

Dr Roy said that NPfIT and Connecting for Health, the NHS organisation responsible for implementing it, should see the poll as a warning sign. “When I talk to colleagues in Europe, where they don’t have any systems as ambitious as this, they are astonished that people in the UK aren’t keener on NPfIT,” he said.

A pro forma letter written by anti-NPfIT campaigners is available on a website for patients who want to object to their details being included in the database. The letter, on www.nhsconfidentiality.org, is designed to be sent by patients to their GPs. The Department of Health said that patients who chose to opt out might not get the best emergency care.

Lost information

— HM Revenue & Customs has admitted losing two CD discs containing the details of 25 million people - the entire child benefit database - which were posted to the National Audit Office

— Nine NHS trusts lost details of hundreds of thousands of health records

— Details of three million candidates for the driver theory test have gone missing from the DVLA in Swansea

— Earlier breaches by the Revenue & Customs include the loss of a laptop in October, stolen from the boot of a car, and the loss of a list of address and account details of customers of the investment bank UBS

Source: Times database

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