§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the state of progress of the Read codes system development; how much has been spent on the Loughborough centre for the development of Read codes; and if he will list the different applications of the Read codes according to progress achieved. [26836]
§ Mr. HoramA project to develop version 3 of Read codes, extending version 2 currently used in general practitioner practices to cover all national health service environments, particularly the acute sector, commenced in 1992. The two-year project to identify all new medical terms was completed in April 1994, that for professions allied to medicine in October 1994, and that for nursing terms in April 1995. This involved 55 working groups and over 2,000 clinicians at a total cost of £3.7 million.
284WA programme of projects has now commenced to pilot the new version 3 in a variety of environments including the acute sector. Previous versions, for example 4 Byte, version 2, continue to be fully supported by the Loughborough-based NHS centre for coding and classification and are in use in about 7,000 GP practices and about 170 NHS trusts.