The doctor will see you now he has logged on...
MILLIONS of patients are set to benefit from a common sense technology revolution to make it quicker for NHS staff to log in to computer systems.
Office workers everywhere will know the problem as a mass of different passwords have to be remembered.
But is has become “ridiculous” in the health service, with some clinicians currently have to log in to as many as 15 different systems when seeing a patient.
Now the Government plans a £40million IT overhaul to free up valuable time for medical staff so more patients can be seen.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the upgrade, announced today, would save hundreds of thousands of hours of staff time a year.
He said: “I want to harness the best digital technology to improve care for patients and ease the burden on our staff. Too often, outdated technology slows down and frustrates staff, and prevents them from giving patients their full attention and the care they deserve. It is frankly ridiculous.
“I’ve lost count of the amount of times staff complain about this. It’s no good in the 21st century having 20th century technology at work.”
NHS digital chief Matthew Gould said: “If you work in the NHS, the tech should not be getting in the way of your ability to do your job.”
Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital has pioneered single sign-on technology with time spent by staff logging into multiple systems cut from one minute 45 seconds to just 10 seconds.
With almost 5,000 logins per day, it saves 130 hours of staff time.