Matt Hancock:

Enough is enough. My mission is to bring the health service’s IT system into the 21st century

Ilove the NHS. It’s been there for me and my family at some of our lowest moments, and at some of the happiest. So I am determined to do my best to make the service the best it can possibly be. We have already proposed £20 billion in extra funding, to guarantee the NHS for the long term. But we also need to ensure the NHS keeps on improving how it works.

A fortnight ago I had the privilege of joining the amazing staff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and the London Ambulance Service for an overnight shift. I was struck by the dedication of the staff, and the ability of the medics, paramedics and nurses to administer care with compassion and impart huge amounts of complex information while under pressure.

But perhaps more than these things, I was struck by how far we need to go to fix our stuttering IT systems. Although Chelsea and Westminster is one of the best trusts for IT, my time there left me in no doubt about the huge benefits to the NHS of embracing modern technology.

I know NHS IT has had a chequered history. And I understand why some have shied away from reforming it. There are fewer bigger organisations in the world, but for the Chinese army and Walmart, so it’s not easy. But we have learned how we can do it, from seizing the incredible opportunities of artificial intelligence through to fixing basic computers in hospitals so they can talk to each other.

The fact that your hospital can’t see your GP record, or that patients don’t have control over their data, or that even within the same hospital different departments have to write down basic details, is expensive, frustrating for staff, and risks patient safety.

In April 2015, 13-year-old Tamara Mills had a fatal asthma attack. She was seen by medical professionals 47 times in different parts of the NHS. Linking the records of her visits and making them available for the clinicians she saw could have allowed her doctors to better understand her medical history, to treat her differently and perhaps prevent her death. A world where we ask an ill patient over and over for their past medical history is a problem. A world in which a hospital can’t pull up a patient’s GP record to see the reason for stopping and starting medications is downright dangerous.

For years we’ve known the importance of national interoperability standards – systems that can talk to each other – but I saw staff resorting to pen and paper because their own networks couldn’t communicate. And don’t get me started on the fact that the NHS remains one of the largest buyers of fax machines on the planet.

Hard-working NHS staff come in every day with the sole aim of helping people become and stay well. We owe it to them to make sure their tech doesn’t just “do the job”, but is helping them to save lives and improve patient outcomes. I’ve made improving technology one of my priorities for the NHS. My message is simple: enough is enough. It’s time to bring the health and care system into the 21st century.

First, we need our systems to be able to talk to each other. We are not going to achieve this by trying to buy one big system, as has been tried and failed in the past. Instead we will impose open standards for the interoperability of systems, alongside stronger standards of privacy and cyber security. We will ensure only systems that talk to each other can be bought or developed, and we are going to increase the in-house capacity to understand technology, to buy the right technology and manage it better.

And today I am announcing a £200 million fund for NHS trusts to bid for to help them with this transformation.

From later this month, the first patients will start testing the NHS app, enabling people to book GP appointments, access the NHS 111 service and view their GP record – so they can interact with the NHS the same way they do their bank.

To do all this we need the right skills as well as the right tools. We will work to build technical skills in the whole health and care system. I want every Trust Board and leadership team to help drive this agenda.

Technology has unleashed huge improvements in the rest of our lives. Done right, with the consent of patients, it can improve our NHS, too. It’s a big task, and today we’re taking a big stride along the way.