Extract from an AOL news item ...

"The Government is reviewing whether sensitive information about NHS patients could be sent overseas for processing, it has been claimed.
This comes only days after the Government was forced to admit HM Revenue and Customs had lost two computer discs containing the personal details of 25 million child benefit claimants."

I retired from the NHS ten years ago from the post of IT Manager in a Trust. Information Technology should have moved on considerably since 1997 when very few trusts had the expertise to properly process the vast amounts of data collected about patients, their diagnoses and treatments.
I can only assume that the suggestion to send information abroad arises from the fact that this lack of expertise still exists.

There are basically two types of information involved here; data processing, ie., statistical analysis, which is vital for planning NHS services, and data input, which is presumably still largely done from patients notes in paper files. In my day there was constant chaos caused by patients files going missing from hospital records departments until they were found in a heap in a consultant's office or worse still in the boot of his car, waiting to be 'written up' following treatment.

God help the NHS if patients records are ever sent OUT OF THE COUNTRY!!
:crazy: