One of the fundamental principles of the Information for Health strategy is the development of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) which is patient-centred and aims to help health care professionals improve the delivery of services to patients. The vision is of a lifelong person-based EHR which follows patients as they move within the NHS. It is envisaged that such a record will be available to authorised clinicians in carefully prescribed circumstances on a 24-hour basis.

In the context of providing access round the clock, the strategy states that one option may involve the development of patient held records, possibly through the use of smart cards.

Smartcards are small credit sized cards which can contain purely administrative information regarding an individual or the more detailed information which is included in existing manual medical records. They come with different sized memory chips depending upon the levels of information required. Information is accessed via a secure and confidential reader in approved NHS organisations.