SCRs have cost NHS £96m

Burns revealed, in a parliamentary written answer to Conservative MP David Davis, that costs incurred by the NHS through local implementation of SCRs are not collected centrally, which suggests that the figure may be substantially higher than £96m. "The government is reviewing the content and opt-out arrangements for the summary care record which will inform final decisions on future spending plans as part of the government's spending review," said Burns. In June the minister announced that the development of the central electronic patient record, a major feature of England's NHS National Programme for IT, was under review with a focus on ownership of the information. In a letter to the British Medical Association at the time, he said there was a "need to ensure security of data contained in the record" and that the government needed "to review the content of the record and to agree with key stakeholders what should be added to the record and over what timescale". SCRs have been widely criticised by academics, most recently by University College London, which concluded that the records had only achieved "modest benefits". After a three year evaluation of the electronic patient record, researchers at the university found that SCRs are little used so far, despite 1.59m having been created.