SCRIPT
DISCUSSION TRIGGER 2: Is the security of our medical history compromised by EPR? Janet
Have you seen the way we keep health records at the moment? They look like… They look like this
She pulls a wodge of brown manila records from her bag.
ISSUES/PROMPTS
COMMENT
I actually shouldn’t be taking these home with me, it places these records at risk, but I work 14 hour days and sometimes a human being just needs to do their job. So I sort them out in bed.
Janet is frustrated by the difficulties presented by what she sees as a chaotic system for storing people's records. At this point in the play she views the new Electronic Patient Record as an essential development that will help her to do her job properly. But is an electronic system really more secure than a paper system?
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Currently records are stored in a variety of ways: paper files, local databases or a combination of both. Janet complains that paper records are never 'where [she] needs them' and often get lost. Does the new system solve this security problem? Paper records do get lost, but it is difficult to loose many thousands in one go, as has happened with electronic records in other contexts. Does this mean EPR compromises our security? 'No system is 100 % secure'. If this is the case and EPR is the most efficient system then should we really be debating security?