PART of the trial for the government’s multi-million-pound scheme to computerise the National Health Service has been halted over fears that patient confidentiality may be compromised.

Medical staff in a pilot project for the “choose and book” appointments system — designed to speed up referrals to consultants — claim it gives any doctor access to any GP’s patient’s records and allows them to make changes.

Confidentiality is just one problem detailed in a leaked memo by a project leader in the national programme for information technology (NPfIT) which outlines seven reasons why doctors have refused to use the system, even in trials.

One senior physician involved in the project said last week: “It’s a system that’s just asking to be abused.”

The £65m choose and book scheme was launched last year by John Reid, the health secretary, and was intended to be a showcase for the planned £6.2 billion computerisation of the NHS, the biggest IT programme ever undertaken in Britain.

Reid views the system as pivotal in enabling NHS patients to choose where, when and by whom they are treated. It is designed to allow any GP to book a patient an appointment with a consultant anywhere in England by December 2005. Reid has pledged that every patient will be given a choice of at least three local NHS hospitals and a private alternative.

The scheme is already understood to be behind schedule and the memo to managers of pilot projects in Barnsley, Harrogate and Haringey, north London, suggests the software has “fundamental” design flaws. The leaked document informed trusts involved in the scheme that doctors in Barnsley had refused to use the system. Although clinicians had been given access from July, “no actual live bookings have taken place”. The scheme was then temporarily halted.

The memo details a wide range of problems. In addition to allowing any user to access a patient’s records, the system does not keep sensitive details such as HIV and pregnancy terminations from being made available on the NHS’s central computer. The central computer managing the choose and book system has also proved unreliable. It often works slowly and can crash for long periods.

Some doctors complained that, instead of being sent details of their appointments, they were sent a code number with no patient name attached to it.

The author of the memo concludes: “Clinicians will not take kindly to accepting changes that are detrimental to existing working processes unless there are significant or proven benefits.”

He adds: “Implementation at Barnsley is currently on hold until sufficient reassurances have been made to convince the project team that all aspects of concern regarding the confidentiality of patient information have been approved.”

Choose and book is the highest-profile part of the Department of Health’s IT project. When the contract was signed in October last year with SchlumbergerSema, Richard Granger, the £250,000-a-year director-general of IT in the NHS, said it was “well defined”.

James Herbert, NPfIT’s director of communication, said: “We have never denied this is a complicated programme and we think this memo demonstrates we are trying to do it in a sensible fashion.”

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