The sharing of patient data at NHS trusts in Scotland has been put up for debate among doctors and health professionals at a forthcoming conference.

The distribution and accessibility of patient records on the NHS has become a hot topic in recent years as GPs come under increasing pressure from managers to share patients` files.

However, concerns have been raised about the safeguards that are currently in place to ensure that files remain confidential, sparking calls for a debate over the scale of the system in the future and the security measures that will be used to protect it.

The issue has been put forward for discussion at the British Medical Association conference in Clydebank later this month, which will be attended by Scottish GPs and health professionals who will discuss the implications of data sharing on the NHS.

Dr Alan McDevitt, secretary of the Glasgow local medical committee, said: "Because of the difficulties of having to get patient information quickly it would be difficult for hospital staff to maintain password security at times.

"If we put all this information on the system it potentially means the information is accessible from an awful lot of computers across the NHS in Scotland.

"We have to keep working at it because we don`t have enough of the safeguards yet to share more of this information."

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