Most of the NHS is paperless. However, to use the term NHS is difficult. There is no organisation called NHS. There are lots of government owned, community partnership owned and privately owned organisations delivering NHS care.

Then there is The Data Protection Act 1995.

Then there is the problem getting clinical indemnity insurance where you need to access and make decisions on patients from other organisations' records.

Then there is.....

It isn't the lack of will, it's the lack of practicality. Try telling a GP practice where the partners have taken a big pay cut in year to buy in an IT system they were told was "compliant" to find a few months later that the local hospital has bought a system that means they need to spend lots more to speak to it.

If we had an NHS as a single organisation, it might be easy but we never have had. GP surgeries hold the "overall" record but they are all small private partnership companies and trust me, as someone involved in getting them to work together as federated concerns, it isn't easy.

I don't know what the answer actually is, but meanwhile, The NHS is 95% paperless already, doesn't need politicians trying to get the credit for the final 5% that isn't ever going to get there anyway and in any event, the issue isn't lack of paperless but trying to get paperless systems working together seamlessly.

For that, a reform of data protection legislation and a change of insurance rules will work far better than shouting at people with no money and both hands tied behind their backs.

I look forward to the day when an A&E consultant can look at an unconscious person from the other end of the country and know what medications they are already on, what chronic conditions they have and what might kill them through allergy if certain drugs are administered. What is concerning is that some people assume that to be already the case. But when the previous government tried it, it was construed as identity cards through the back door by journalists and the opposition. Back to square one.