The 10 projects at the heart of NHS IT

GP2GP

The GP2GP system allows patient records to be electronically transferred to a new practice when a patient moves doctor.

Find out more about the 10 key NHS IT projects

♦  NHS Care Records Service

♦  Choose and Book

♦  The Electronic Prescription Service

♦  N3 national broadband network

♦  Picture Archiving and Communications System (Pacs)

♦  The Spine

♦  The Quality Management and Analysis System

♦  GP2GP record transfer

♦  NHSmail- a central email and directory service for the NHS

♦  Secondary Uses Service

Under the current system, many patient records are printed out and posted - and then retyped at the other end.

Electronic transfers are intended to be more accurate and secure - and much faster than the current paper-based approach, which can take up to six weeks to complete.

What progress so far?

In November 2006 the first live transfer took place as part of a trial of the system. GP2GP has now been used for 327,482 medical record transfers and the rollout to GP surgeries is ahead of deadline with just under 60 per cent of the practices in England currently use the service.

Some 4,969 GP practices have had upgrades to the new system and 4,262 of these are now actively operating GP2GP.

Paul Cundy, former chairman of the British Medical Association's IT Committee described the system as "world beating tech" which works "very successfully", and takes a lot of the effort out of the previously complex and cumbersome process of transferring large files on patients.

The system is so popular, demand is outstripping supply, Cundy said.