Healthcare

This is a review. The publication page gives 19 Jan 2016. It describes a possible use. It does not name a system the NHS was running, and it does not say an authority had adopted a ledger.

The report is by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser. In the NHS, the technology could improve health care by making the delivery of services easier to check, and by sharing records securely under exact rules. People could, depending on the circumstances, control who sees their records and know who has looked.

Applications were being explored in healthcare, including patient records. The technologies were very early. Many problems, including privacy, speed and the ability to grow, were still unsolved.

A case study on registering assets says a distributed ledger could be applied to smart contracts and to recording who owns an asset. The examples include NHS health data, alongside intellectual property, wills, notary services and pensions. People could have more control over data such as health data, and could check whether it had been used for the right reasons. For that to happen, local and national authorities would have to adopt the technology. The review does not say one had.

This is NHS England's page for the Single Patient Record. The page gives no date of its own. The record is in the very early stages, in a test and learn phase. The page does not name a blockchain or a distributed ledger. It does not say a simpler database was chosen instead.

The record will bring a patient's health information together in one place. From 2028, people are expected to start viewing that data through the NHS App, and healthcare professionals would see what they need from one place. In Oct 2024 the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced an ambition to join patient data into a single record. That announcement was not opened. The timeline also refers to new legislation in the Health Bill in May 2026, so that hospitals, GP practices and other NHS providers share patient data and the record can be created. The Bill was not opened.

Three technical approaches were explored with three shared-care-record suppliers: InterSystems, Interweave and Orion. One joins existing regional shared care records through a central interface. One is a centrally managed store of data, connected to several care settings. One connects existing systems in the background, so a user sees a joined-up view. The approaches are not independent of each other, and what is learned from each shapes the design. A supplier's involvement does not guarantee any future work, and it does not give them an advantage or exclude them.

The record brings together data from existing NHS and social care systems. The information is also kept where it was first created, such as a GP surgery or a hospital. Shared care records do not cover the whole country. The Federated Data Platform helps hospitals plan, and it does not bring all patient data together.