Information technology in medical practice: safety and privacy lessons from the United Kingdom

The previous UK government's strategy for managing information technology i n healthcare caused serious safety and privacy problems, which led to a gov ernment review of healthcare computing that advocated some seemingly quite radical changes. Here I offer a personal view of what went wrong, as an eng ineer with a background in both safety-critical systems and computer securi ty and who has been involved in advising the British Medical Association (B MA) on the safety and privacy of clinical information systems.