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The care records will contain all relevant information and medical history of the patient and can be called up from anywhere instead of the current situation whereby if someone is admitted to hospital, the doctors have no immediate access to their local GP's records. It will be particularly useful when someone is brought into the casualty department where the staff have to know the background of a perhaps unconscious patient before recommending treatment.

The idea of the NHS Care Records Service was originally proposed in a 1998 Department of Health document which outlined a vision of the NHS to provide medical records for everyone in electronic format, with round-the- clock, on-line access to patient records.