Terminal care

摘要

Forget Britain's plan for a national identity-card scheme. For social significance and political sensitivity, it is dwarfed by Connecting for Health (CFH), a planned information-technology revolution in the National Health Service. Supporters regard it as the secret to a vastly more efficient NHS. A high-capacity network and a national "data spine" will zap medical information such as x-ray results and scans. Now it takes days or weeks. Appointments and prescriptions will be automated. Critics retort that the project is over-ambitious, unrealisable and threatens medical confidentiality.