Photos: MoD unveils £80m IT health programme

The Ministry of Defence has unveiled an £80m electronic military medical records system.

The system, due to be fully rolled out by 2010, allows military personnel health records to be transferred between practices electronically, instead of using the traditional paper-based system.

Derek Twigg MP, under secretary of state of defence, said: "The days of paper records are numbered."

Twigg added: "Whether they [service personnel] are in Birmingham, Cyprus or the Falklands, [medical staff] will have access to up-to-date medical records."

By 2010, these electronic records will be accessible in any of the 299 medical and 181 dental Defence Medical Services (DMS) centres which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) runs around the globe, as well as field hospitals and 25 Royal Navy ships.

The Defence Medical Information Capability Programme (DMICP) system will hold the records of 200,000 military personnel, along with 50,000 civilian medical records.

Mike Manson, assistant director of medical information management in the DMS department of the MoD, said: "This population is roughly equivalent to an NHS primary healthcare trust but the big difference is that we operate worldwide."

Pictured is a mock-up of an aid post which the MoD would deploy on a battlefield.