DOCTORS are cautioning that a failure to consult staff and patients over the new multibillion-pound NHS computer system will add to a 2½-year delay announced by ministers.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said that patients should be asked for consent before their details were put on the national electronic database. But the Government, which is planning to presume patient consent, said that this would take up extra time for doctors on a system already suffering serious delays.

The price of an electronic system to keep records is set to rise from £6.2 billion to about £20 billion, Lord Warner, the Health Minister, said yesterday. The system, which will computerise records for 50 million patients, will not be ready until 2008, and is likely to be criticised in a National Audit Office report next month.

Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA’s GPs Committee, said: “Family doctors are concerned that this scheme . . . is trying to do too much too quickly and could threaten patient confidentiality.”

The program, Connecting for Health, has four main projects: online booking; centralised, electronic medical records; e-prescriptions; and fast network links between NHS organisations.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “The NHS IT program is one of the largest IT projects in the world and will revolutionise patient care. As with any large, complex program there will be difficulties.”

Times Recommends

• Milk: do we need a dairy godmother?
• DIY: the women doing it for themselves
• First double portrait of Princes unveiled