Photos: MoD unveils £80m IT health programme

From 2010, the system will be connected to the NHS systems but with any sensitive military information stripped out.

It will also mean the NHS medical records of new recruits can be imported directly into the DMS' systems, and records can be exported back to civilian GPs on retirement.

The entire system will also be searchable with all personal details removed — to search for trends, such as how many military personnel have given up smoking in the past 12 months.

Jonathan Cox, clinical policy officer for the Army Primary Healthcare Service, said searching for such patterns is not possible at the moment without having to ask every MoD medical centre to go through every record and collate that information.