NHS: Seven times ministers have promised the health service will ‘go paperless’

In 1992, then-health minister Virginia Bottomley MP (pictured) launched the NHS IM&T strategy 'Getting better with information'. It promised to deliver a fully computerised NHS and set a series of goals to have been met by 1995, including 'computerised' GP practices. Deadlines slipped repeatedly and were then overtaken by events – in particular Labour's landslide 1997 general election victory.

In 1998 then-health secretary Frank Dobson MP oversaw the launch of an ambitious government white paper called 'Information for Health'. It promised electronic health records would provide "a longitudinal record of patient’s health and health care – from cradle to grave" - by 2005.

In 2001 the NHS published yet another strategy, this time under health secretary Alan Milburn MP. The 'Building the Information Core' strategy was seen a forerunner to the (it turned out, disastrous) National Programme for IT. It said the plan would 'build on and update' the 1998 strategy. By 2005, the NHS would have fully electronic, shared records, booking systems and other IT components, accessible by patients and integrated across all providers, the government promised (stop sniggering at the back).

Less than a year later Milburn and other government ministers unveiled the 'National Programme for IT', a huge, ambitious (and it turned out undeliverable) project to move the NHS to a single, centrally-mandated electronic care record for patients and to connect 30,000 GPs to 300 hospitals by 2010. Sounded simple enough...

A year later, another health minister - John Reid MP - and another announcement - this time that every NHS patient would have an individual electronic 'NHS Care Record' by 2010, now known as the 'Summary Care Record'. Although controversial during implementation (campaigners say patients have not been kept informed or told how to opt out), most patients do, 12 years after launch, now finally have one. 

The Public Accounts Committee published a damning 175-page report on paperless NHS aims in April 2007, saying patient records were still 'primarily on paper' and even when electronic, were not being shared between providers. Chairman Edward Leigh MP (pictured) said: "This is the biggest IT project in the world and it is turning into the biggest disaster."

The new coalition government's health secretary Andrew Lansley MP announced plans for an 'information revolution' in the NHS in 2010 via a white paper. It promised to put the patient 'at the heart' of the NHS, improve the information available to them and scrap 'top down' targets.

In September 2011 the new coalition government said it would dismantle the National Programme but keep its component parts (e.g. plans for electronic records) in place. The project had cost over £10 billion when it was scrapped and is still being paid for even now (some contracts, for example with CSC, don't expire until 2016).

One of Jeremy Hunt MP's first announcements as health secretary (replacing Lansley, who became very unpopular after a 'top down' NHS reorganisation) was to announce a paperless NHS via yep, you guessed it, precisely the 'top down' targets the government said it had eschewed three years earlier.

He promised patients would be able to book appointments, order repeat prescriptions and access GP health records online by March 2015, with digitised health records to be fully available across NHS and social care services by April 2018.

The Public Accounts Committee, now led by Margaret Hodge MP (pictured) expressed doubts over the viability of the NHS's new paperless plans in a report published later that year. 

"Given the Department of Health's track record with the National Programme, it is highly unlikely that the paperless NHS towards which the Department is working has a high chance of being achieved by the target date of 2018", it concluded. Ouch. 

November 2014 delivered just what the NHS has been crying out for - another paperless target - this time a commitment for all citizens' health and care records to be available digitally in real-time by 2020. The strategy document was published at the behest of NHS digital director Tim Kelsey (pictured, who is now set to depart in December 2015).

Another paperless pledge: health secretary Jeremy Hunt has committed £4 billion in funding for a digital transformation of the NHS – with £1.8 billion from the kitty going towards updating legacy IT and building a paperless service.

Citizens, it's promised, will have access to their health records online, and will be able to make use of telepresence services and sharing data with their GPs.

Hunt told the BBC the government hopes 10 percent of all patients will be using computers, tablets or smartphones to access health services by March 2017 – a year before the target set by the previous Coalition government to go totally paperless.

In February 2017 another paperless pledge was broken with the publication of comments from Jeremy Hunt admitting that the 2018 target was no longer possible. The health secretary had been advised that the deadline was unrealistic by American IT expert Professor Bob Wachter, and blamed the delay on weak hospital systems. 

"I perhaps rather bravely said I wanted the NHS to be paperless by 2018 in my first few months as health secretary, and I am quite relieved that most people seem to have forgotten that I made that promise," he told the House of Lords select committee on the Long Term Sustainability of the NHS in December 2016, as UKAuthority revealed.

"I think we are making good progress. There is definitely lots to do. We are weak at the moment on hospital IT systems.

"Professor Bob Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, came over and looked at the state of hospital IT systems, and has given us some very good advice. He does not think 2018 will be possible."