Doctors’ leaders expressed concern today after the Government that admitted its National Health Service IT programme is way behind schedule and over budget.

Lord Warner, the Health Minister overseeing the Government’s health service IT programme, said the full cost was likely to be nearer £20 billion than the widely quoted figure of £6.2 billion.

Plans to introduce an electronic medical record for every NHS patient in England are also at least two-and-a-half years behind schedule, he said.

His comments come after around half of GPs said in a survey that the new "choose and book" system for online booking was poor or fairly poor.

The IT programme involves four main projects: the online booking system; a centralised electronic medical records system for 50 million patients; e-prescriptions; and fast network links between NHS organisations.

Over the next 10 years, the programme - run by NHS Connecting for Health - is expected to link more than 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals.

Lord Warner told the Financial Times that some parts of the programme "are going pretty well and pretty much to time", but that others "are going more slowly than we would otherwise like".

He said that the Government had had to "regroup" over the electronic record for patients, which is is meant to make patients’ data available wherever and whenever it is needed.

The delays mean the record may not be in place until early 2008 and are due partly to delays in providing the software, which is being developed by iSoft and other companies.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee, said there were concerns that needed to be addressed before the scheme was rolled out across England.

He said: "Family doctors have been in the forefront of using modern technology but have been concerned that this national scheme for an electronic database of patient information is trying to do too much too quickly and could threaten patient confidentiality.

"GPs are anxious to see that the various concerns are addressed before the scheme is rolled out. The BMA’s GPs Committee position is that patients should be given the opportunity to provide an informed consent before their health record details are put on a national database. This is particularly important as there is so much uncertainty and a lack of public information at the moment."

Regarding the "choose and book" system for booking hospital appointments, Dr Meldrum added: "While the concept of being able to book their hospital appointments whilst in the GPs surgery is superficially attractive, there are a whole host of technical and practical problems that have to be addressed.

"So far, experience has been very patchy in terms of how well or badly the electronic booking system works."

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