Project Issues

Delivering The Open Project presents the project team with many challenging issues and risks.

Confidentiality

Lets be honest, the most worrying aspect of trying to give our patients access to their medical records is the risk that one patient may inadvertently (or intentionally) access the record of another.

Cost
The discs are not free beyond the life of the pilot trial period (3rd Feb- 1st May, 2003). Although, under the terms of The Data Protection Act, we are entitled to make a charge for access to the medical record. Patients may not realise this or accept that this is reasonable. The cost of the trial alone in terms of manpower and consumables is likely to exceed £1000.

Expectations
Patient expectations may be raised to a level which is difficult or costly to maintain. The aim of the project is to encourage patients to learn more about their health record and to check it for accuracy. Patient expectation may extend beyond the aims of the project - even to the point of expecting an instant updated copy of their patient held record after every consultation.

Technology failure

Whilst we are confident in the ability of the clinical system we use to provide us with the ability to produce large numbers of readable CD Rom copies of patient's medical records, if this technology was to fail then we would be left attempting to create summaries for checking without