BT is working with the NHS to deliver the Spine, the secure national database of key information about a patient's health and care.
The Spine, which BT has built and is managing, stores essential patient information, including demographic and clinical information which may be important for the patient’s future treatment and care. It also ensures the security of access to national and local systems and interfaces with all the IT systems within the NPfIT.
Its messaging capability enables the delivery of a range of other services being rolled out, including the Electronic Prescription Service and Choose and Book. At the core of the NPfIT, the Spine gives healthcare professionals faster, easier secure access to reliable information about patients, helping the NHS to operate more effectively. The Spine also supports how money flows through the NHS, having already processed more than £80 billion via Payment By Results.
Since being awarded the contract to build the Spine in 2003, BT has developed the systems and services to support more than 700,000 registered users. It is one of the world's largest transactional databases, containing the demographic information of more than 70 million patients.
For the latest deployment statistics, visit the NHS Connecting for Health website.