Health Secretary claims “billions” could be saved by making NHS paperless over next few years, with possible repercussions for the aftermarket.
BBC News reports on the possibility of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) – the country’s largest employer, becoming “paperless” in a bid to save billions of pounds per year following a proposal by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Beginning with making health records accessible to people online by 2015, Hunt’s proposal continues by adding that by April 2018, “crucial health information should be available to staff at the touch of a button”, with PwC suggesting that “a potential £4.4 billion ($7 billion/€5.2 billion) could be put back into the NHS with better use of information technology”.
It has also been suggested that staff will have more time to spend with patients should electronic prescribing and electronic patient records replace the use of paper records, with the John Taylor Hospice near Birmingham claiming that using laptops “more than doubled” the time staff were able to spend with patients.
In terms of implications for the aftermarket, having a paperless NHS could mean that OEMs would dominate in this market in the area of document services, with many OEMs already prepared to provide paperless office management systems.
There would also be an impact on the amount of empties going back into to the aftermarket, with the OEM dominance likely to result empties being collected by OEMs and shredded.
Furthermore, with the NHS being the UK’s biggest employer, its influence may mean that other government departments may opt to go paperless if the idea is deemed successful, eradicating the possibility of remanufacturing procurement contracts with these departments as well as the NHS.
Finally, going paperless would potentially have an impact on MPS providers as well as remanufacturers, as the reduction in printing would also mean less business for these companies.
Responding to the proposals, the Labour Party has noted that people may not be happy with the government’s plans to priorities IT at a time of significant cuts for the NHS, with Jamie Reed, Shadow Health Minister for Labour, commenting: “As winter bites, the NHS is facing its toughest time of the year and the government has left it unprepared. Patients are waiting too long in A&E and being treated in under-staffed hospitals – they will not thank [Hunt] for making this a priority. He should sort out the bread and butter issues first.”
What are your views on the NHS possibly going paperless? The Recycler will be focusing on this development in detail in a future issue – if you’d like to be involved, contact us at news@therecycler.com, or comment on this article below.