Bull HN Information Systems Ltd, headquartered in Brentford, Middlesex, made a determined effort this week to launch the idea of the CP8 embedded microprocessor Smart Card used a Care Card portable medical history. Bull claims that its use would ensure that records would always be available and accessible, and would eventually mean lower healthcare costs. Following a three-year pilot project in Exmouth, Devon to evaluate the practicality of the Computer Readable Patient Data Card, Bull hopes that the card will be adopted on a national basis. The Exmouth project was a collaborative venture between Abies Medical Information Systems Ltd, based in Chiswick, London, Bull and the Department of Health. Abies clinical information software was used at all of the sites. Two general practices and their 9,000 patients were involved, and the cards could be read at eight pharmacies, one dental practice, the casualty department of the local cottage hospital and at the area District General Hospital at Exeter. Security of information was a major priority as the cards were used to transfer a medical summary as well as prescriptions between the different computer systems in doctors’ surgeries, pharmacies, hospitals and dental practices. Patients are given their own personal indetification number with which to access their medical records and healthcare professionals involved were issued with a key card which is also personal number-protected and determines which part of a patient’s record they could see. The card contains a built-in Bull CP8 microcontroller and the processor in the card controls access to the data. The card has 2Kb of Read Only Memory which stores the operating system, and a 16K-bit Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory with room for the equivalent of 11 A4 pages of information. Bull estimates that installation costs would be between UKP15,000 and UKP25,000 per site, depending on existing hardware. The cost of the cards would be about UKP5 a time, depending on the size of the order. The Department of Health currently has no plans to fund trials in any other area of the country so Bull is having to promote the concept to health authorities itself.
