ABSTRACT
Information technology in general practice has developed in a somewhat unsystematic way since the 1970s, and the General Practice Research Database, previously known as VAMP, was one of the methods used to assess workloads for the new General Medical Services contract. Electronic links convey correspondence, such as patient test results and consultant letters, directly between the sender's and the recipient's computer systems. The trend among hospitals with well-established computer systems is to integrate them into one powerful scheme called a hospital information support system. In April 2005 the National Programme for Information Technology (NPIT) was amalgamated as an agency of the Department of Health, and it is now called National Health Service Connecting for Health. The Health and Social Care Information Service is a new special health authority which was set up in 2005. It aims to facilitate information flow across the whole system and to improve the credibility of reported information, while reducing the burden of information collection.
