Business Stability 2: How risky are electronic records

One of the threats suggested by various observers is that loss of data could destroy a business. To what extent does this apply to General Medical Practices? Could a General Practice which decides to go the paperless route suddenly find itself out of business because its business information has vanished?

Firstly, does it in fact apply to businesses in general?

Ross Anderson in part of the Eternity Service paper argues that it does not, at least not to the extent suggested by people who want to sell solutions for the problem.

Certainly, the loss of all the notes could be a major inconvenience.

But the most common mechanism for loss of records is fire, which is effective at destroying paper records, but rarely destroys both primary and backup copies of electronic records. The presence of large quantities of flammable material of course is one way in which paper records are dangerous.

The most plausible way of losing access to data is by losing the ability or right to run the software whcih gives the data meaning.

In practical terms this comes about through the supplier of IT services becoming unstaisfactory, which is the largest IT risk facing Practices, or for that matter groups and other larger aggregations of healthcare organisations. The usual answer adopted to managing this risk by practices has been to choose a company which has a large market share. This has failed in a substantial proportion of cases but is still very popular, and even more so among those now getting into the game - PCG/T and health authority IT staff. These last have the great advantage of not playing with their own money, and a short-term outlook compared to the 50 year span of the NHS or the 100+ year span not atypical of General Practices and hospitals.

An alternative strategy to manage this risk includes minimising the complication of data - thus making it probable that the notes can be read regardless of the availability of the original programs and suppliers, and using Open Source software and data formats wherever this is not impossible.

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