Failing IT systems in military surgeries are ‘putting military lives at risk’, doctors warn
Medical staff say soldiers are in danger of being given the wrong drugs and missing out on vital vaccines due to computer glitches, with one calling it ‘the biggest threat to patient safety that I have encountered in my 20-year career’
BRITAIN’S troops are having their lives put at risk due to IT chaos in military surgeries, doctors have warned.
GPs claim IT problems are causing them to muddle up different patients’ records and name patients as “fit to be deployed” without full health checks.
They also raise concerns over delayed treatment for cancer patients in Northern Ireland. Doctors collected these claims in an unofficial log over the past 18 months.
One doctor anonymously told The Times: “There is nothing that has happened [in my career], including deployments to Afghanistan, that has caused me as much stress as the IT issues that we have.”
The log sent to the army’s most senior doctor reports several minor operations went ahead without written consent because of printer breakages.
In another incident recorded by GPs, information about one patient’s sexually transmitted disease came up on a doctor’s screen while the doctor was trying to open the next patient’s record.
Colonel Glynn Evans, chairman of the armed forces committee of the British Medical Association, warns of an impending crisis, said: “[Committee members] are worried about the systematic failure of the IT system not allowing them to deliver safe medical care.
“My members tell me this represents potentially material risk to the soldiers, sailors and airmen they look after.”
Britain’s 147,000 troops receive primary care from 500 military and civilian doctors, who rely on the Ministry of Defence’s medical IT system, instead of the NHS.
Doctors claim cancer patients in Northern Ireland are suffering from delays in treatment as the military medical IT system will not connect to the NHS.
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ModNET, a £900million IT update for the armed forces created in 2016, has been criticised for failing to meet the needs of military surgeries.
The report in the Times says doctors have been calling on Lieutenant-General Martin Bricknell, the Surgeon General of the British Armed Forces, to make urgent improvements for the past two years.
One doctor told the Times: “Crashes, long freezes, lost consultations… printer issues and habitual slowness moving from one patient to another are normal facts of life.
“Not only are there longstanding issues of safe practice and patient confidentiality but also there is this source of deep frustration and stress arising from chronic poor functioning of the IT and a total loss of confidence in it.”