Contract to run care record service handed to BT

British Telecom has been awarded the 10-year contract worth
£620 million to establish and run an electronic care record
service for health and care information.

The service, which will create an electronic care record for
every NHS patient in England and detail their social care and
health treatments, will connect more than 30,000 GPs and 270 acute
community and mental health NHS trusts.

Health secretary John Reid said: “The NHS record will
completely revolutionise the way that information is accessed and
will make available efficient, secure and integrated records to the
right people at the right time.”

He added that patient records would be available 24-hours a day,
seven days a week “to ensure the vital information about an
individual’s health and care can be instantly available to health
professionals”.