An official report on the use of ICT in Dutch health care has warned for risks. It lists the usual suspects like loss of data, medical data being unavailable due to the system being down, identity theft, malfunction, human errors, and so on.

The report is important because in 2006 all Dutch medical files are planned to be digital. The main cause of problems mentioned were small local systems, far too much info is only in the PC of the doctor's assistant. Out of reach of the central IT department's backup regime, not able to communicate with the centralized info systems.

There's still a lot to be done.

Peter