Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the NHS has made an assessment of the level of the resilience of digital health records systems to prolonged power outages during electricity system stress events.

In the event of a disruption, the National Health Service maintains business continuity and emergency preparedness arrangements, including fallback systems, and protocols to mitigate the impact on health and patient care.

The NHS has long standing measures in place to manage disruption which would be caused by a power outage. Electronic patient record systems usually have a back-up power source, and paper patient records and handwritten notes may also be used as a contingency.

All NHS-funded organisations must meet the requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the NHS Act 2006, and the Health and Care Act 2022. These requirements are also supported by the NHS Standard Contract, the NHS Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPPR) Framework, NHS Core Standards for EPRR, and the NHS England Business Continuity Management Toolkit.