New funding announced for patient safety technology

A new 260 million pound funding pot is being made available to UK hospitals in order to ensure patients receive safe and effective care.

Money from the Department of Health will be used to replace outdated paper-based systems for patient notes and prescriptions, allowing computer-generated prescriptions to be sent by doctors directly to pharmacies, identified by barcodes unique to each patient.

It is thought that errors in prescriptions are present in as many as eight percent of hospital prescriptions – with at least 11 people dying in the NHS as a result of such mistakes last year – but studies have shown that the use of technology can potentially reduce this percentage by half.

These modernisations will also support the government's wider goal of helping the NHS go all-digital by 2018.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "If we are to improve patient safety then we must allow the NHS to have access to the best tools available and this fund will help them achieve that."

The issue of patient safety was placed under the microscope earlier this month by a BBC News report showing that a large number of serious mistakes – such as leaving surgical equipment inside patients and operating on the wrong site – are still taking place at English hospitals.