I blogged a few years ago about President Obama receiving more than 1000 faxes per day and at least one reader was amazed. In the Economist of April 2nd 2011 there was a piece about digitising the US health records and serving them through the cloud. In the piece there is the mention that “the average American doctors’ surgery still handles 1,000 faxes a day. It also notes that one reason for the delay in moving to the cloud is the “reflexive conservatism and technophobia of medical folk”. I don’t think the technophobia applies to those I know in the UK, even the GP practices, but there does seem to be little standardisation across the country and I suspect the Lansley plans might make this even worse.
However, as creeping privatisation enters the UK health market no doubt the cloud delivery of health data will follow?