Professor Brendan McAdam:

It is critically important. That is a great point. We are all going around with paper records, which is a bit archaic. You cannot integrate data from different hospitals. You have to ring up people and ring services to get data. If we had electronic records it would facilitate better provision of care. That is widely available across Europe. It would allow hospitals to talk to each other and ensure there was no duplication of services. It would allow us to be involved in registries so we could measure what we are doing and then we can benchmark what we are doing against our colleagues' care across Europe and improve care provision. An e-strategy for healthcare and patient records is an essential part of what we need to do.