NHS contingency use email by default, says health secretary Matt Hancock

Health secretary Matt Hancock wants NHS staff to use email as a default process for communicating with patients, instead of relying roughly only on paper letters.

Speaking during a NHS England Empowering people in a digital world discussion in London, a secretary of state for health and amicable caring criticised those in a health use who reject a use of secure, complicated communication methods.

“We spend £8m a year in a NHS on paper. We spend £2m a year on envelopes. We can save lives, save staff time and cut costs by regulating an unusual square of record that has a ability to concede dual people to promulgate instantaneously… It’s called email, we don’t know either any of we have listened of it. We’re going to use it opposite a NHS, not only to promulgate internally, though to promulgate by default with patients,” he said.

Hancock pounded a faith on paper in a NHS, reiterating a prior aspiration to “axe a fax” that led to a anathema on NHS organisations shopping fax machines.

“More than half a million letters between GPs and hospitals have left blank over a past 5 years. If we need to motivate both a remoteness and a operational need to refurbish this old-fashioned technology, that half million figure is right during a tip of a list,” he said.

“Of a 1,788 patients who might have been spoiled as a result, 333 have given died. We don’t know a approach outcome between blank letters and life and genocide outcomes, though it could be a disproportion between life and death.”

NHS Digital is edition new discipline on creation certain email systems in a health use are secure.

“There’s no reason since a alloy can’t email a studious confidentially… as prolonged as a email element is secure. Being means to email a studious is important, required and a right thing to do. Snail mail is slower and reduction secure. In a city like London, people change [home] residence some-more mostly than their email address,” pronounced Hancock.

People who cite to accept letters will still do so, though Hancock pronounced a thought that a NHS “shouldn’t use a record since it can’t be used for everybody is a outrageous mistake”.

In Oct final year, Hancock set out his record prophesy for a NHS, focusing on modern technology architecture, user needs, remoteness and security, interoperability and inclusion. He told NHS staff during a discussion that they have to get adult to date on what today’s record can do.

“We can’t get NHS record into a 21st century until we locate adult with a technologies of a 20th century. There are some people reacting opposite a use of 20-year-old technology. We are on a side of patients, of confidence and privacy, of improving and saving lives,” he said.