The UK National Health Service (NHS) has decided to change the rules regarding future access to patients' electronic health records that will eventually be part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) system, the website computing.co.uk reports.

According to the story, "Patients will now be able to choose whether to deny permission for records to join the database, whether they want to be asked this question each time they have a medical encounter, or whether they want to allow full permission for all details to be uploaded."

Previously, patients had to opt out from having their summary care record added to the NPfIT database, called the Spine, which over the next two years will have uploaded into it the records of every NHS patient in England.

It is going to be interesting to see exactly how this operates in practice. Is a patient going to be given a list of everyone who might see his or her health record ahead of time, and be asked to give or withhold consent? Or will the patient be asked each time a medical professional receives his or her health record to give their consent? Either way, there could be a lot of administrative overhead involved.

Similar approaches for patient consent are being debated in the US.