Tech
Electronic health records are still creating issues for patients | Computer Weekly
Every NHS trust in England needs an electronic patient record (EPR) system in place by March 2026, as part of a government push to digitise the healthcare system.
In many ways, this is long overdue: some trusts have still been using pen-and-paper record-keeping until very recently.
EPRs have the potential to massively improve efficiency in the NHS. If working properly, they allow doctors to keep all of their records in one place, speed up prescribing and diagnostics, and make it easier for patients to access their own health information.
But these roll-outs have not been without problems. Concerns have been raised about how far these benefits can actually be realised. Some NHS trusts have experienced issues with integrating new systems and training staff on how to use them.
In the extreme, there have been reports of EPRs creating new problems for hospitals, with evidence suggesting these systems may have contributed to serious harm and even deaths among patients.
NHS trusts have been put in charge of procuring their own EPRs, meaning there are numerous different technology companies involved. Some providers of these systems are large US firms. This includes Oracle Health, provided by the Larry Ellison-led tech giant, and Epic, a tech firm based in Wisconsin.
Contracts can run into nine figures: Guy’s and St Thomas’, a trust in South London, launched a £450m system from Epic in late 2023. Some parts of the NHS have been using them for more than a decade, but a handful are still set to miss the government’s March deadline.
Data access
Pritesh Mistry is a fellow at the King’s Fund, where he researches the impact of digital transformation in the NHS. He says it has had “both positive and negative impacts”.
“In the last few years, we’ve seen doubling down on the focus around digital records,” says Mistry. These are now in place in more than 90% of all trusts, and every GP practice.
“That means we’ve now got [new] data that’s within the healthcare system, which allows us to do other things, like treat populations, and understand and track patient safety,” he says.
Despite this, he cautions some patients are still struggling to get hold of their own data.
“We’ve got a lot of data that’s in silos,” says Mistry. “It doesn’t flow. That’s the biggest challenge: making the data accessible and usable for patients and healthcare professionals to be able to provide care in a way that is joined up and meets with modern expectations.”
He says complaints with new technology haven’t just come from patients.
“We need to recognise that staff are really frustrated,” says Mistry. “Software often crashes. Computers are really slow, and technology adds to their workload, instead of simplifying things.” He caveats that some parts of the NHS are better than others on this.
Safeguarding patient data
Mistry adds that there are safeguards in place to ensure patient data isn’t ending up where it shouldn’t be – such as through data protection rules and procurement requirements.
However, he warns that “we need to make sure we move with the times in terms of what technology is available”. Mistry is more concerned about medical staff inadvertently putting personal information into a large language model, for instance.
“Digital exclusion remains a barrier as well,” he says, adding that these systems have the potential to widen inequalities in healthcare. Those less able to use new technology might struggle to access their records.
“People tend to assume it’s old people [who are most impacted], but that isn’t necessarily true,” says Mistry, instead highlighting the impact of poverty and deprivation, with some still unable to afford internet access.
He argues the NHS should be working to meet people where they are, and provide more “tailored” technology services.
Patient safety
Nick Woodier is a doctor and investigator at the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), which looks into issues with healthcare in the UK. He sees problems arising from how EPRs are deployed by trusts, especially when medical staff overestimate their capabilities.
He uses the example of prescribing medicines: “There’s an assumption that these electronic prescribing systems will stop you [from] doing something catastrophic.”
But this isn’t always the case. In one investigation, the HSSIB found a child had been prescribed nearly 10 times the recommended dose of an anti-coagulant medication, with doctors having assumed the EPR would flag an issue. The child ended up with a bleed on their brain.
Woodier also worries hospitals are not always picking up on when these systems are at fault.
“We will often see where incidents have happened and the contribution of the electronic system has not been recognised,” he says.
Woodier sees this as coming from a culture which prefers to put the blame for safety failures on individuals.
A 2024 investigation by the BBC found there were more than 126 instances of serious harm registered by NHS trusts across 31 trusts, including three deaths related to EPR problems.
The HSSIB has also encountered problems from patients being unable to access their digital records.
“We’ve seen in general practice, for example, some patients telling us that they’ve gone without care – because in their mind, they thought the only way they could access their GP was to fill in an electronic form,” says Woodier.
A spokesperson for NHS England says EPRs are “already having a significant impact on improving safety and care for patients”, for instance, by helping to identify conditions such as sepsis, and preventing medication errors.
“They have replaced outdated and often less-safe paper-based systems, and we are working closely with NHS trusts to ensure they are implemented safely alongside other systems with appropriate training – and are used to the highest quality and safety standards,” the spokesperson adds.
Interoperability
The EPR roll-out has also been criticised for problems with “interoperability” – the ability of different programs and modes of data collection to converse with each other. The patchwork of different systems used by different trusts means data stored in one system might not be useful for a system used by a different part of the NHS.
Woodier says this often happens in communications between hospitals and GP surgeries. This can involve someone manually inputting information from one system to another, which can create risks when data is not being transferred properly, or is missed completely.
“When you introduce a manual operation, that risk increases,” he warns. “The odds are that at some point, somebody won’t do the right thing, because that’s the reality of being human.”
Alex Lawrence, a fellow at the Health Foundation, describes interoperability as a “significant challenge”, which the NHS and technology companies have been “grappling with for a really long time”.
“Some trusts have found it much harder to access their own EPR data than they anticipated, because of where that data is stored,” she adds, referring to research the organisation carried out in 2024.
“If it’s taking you days to pull the data that you need, then it’s already not going to be useful for a lot of the purposes that you might want it for.”
However, Lawrence adds that there have been some steps made in the right direction, notably with the Data (Use and Access) Act, which was passed last year.
“The government is making information standards mandatory for EPR providers, as well as trusts, with the Secretary of State potentially having more powers to enforce those standards,” she says.
The longer term
Going forward, Lawrence would like to see a system involving “patients being empowered with access to their own data, and as far as appropriate, clinicians being able to see all of the history that they need for their patients”.
In an ideal system, different parts of the healthcare system would be able to “share a patient’s data where necessary and appropriate, in an easy and timely way”.
She says they have the “potential to offer enormous value”, but much of their functionality is going unused. “What our qualitative research suggested was that a lot of these systems are still functioning as digital notebooks,” says Lawrence.
Matthew Taylor is the head of the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, membership bodies for healthcare organisations.
“NHS leaders say the gap between trusts on digital maturity is still stark – and it’s shaping how quickly organisations can move to modern EPRs,” he says.
This gap – combined with the organisational complexity of the healthcare system – means interoperability has “long been a thorn in the NHS’s side”.
Taylor adds that EPRs are not a “once-and-done” job, and argues they will result in savings in the long term, but that it may take around five years to see the benefits.
“Hospitals are housing a huge amount of paper records, and the cost of storing, retrieving and managing those records can run into millions of pounds each year,” he says.
These systems are part of a larger picture, and one facet of the conversation, around the use of artificial intelligence in the NHS. AI models for areas such as research and diagnostics will require extensive and standardised medical data.
Mistry warns these AI tools operate on the basis of “garbage in, garbage out”.
“There is a risk that we roll out AI tools without the underpinning data quality it needs,” he says, adding that this could exacerbate inequalities or biases from using AI.
As Woodier puts it: “We’ve got organisations who are still using archaic computers, have got infrastructure that’s not working, are still on old web systems, or have EPRs that don’t talk to each other. A few [trusts] don’t have EPRs.
“So, actually, are we trying to run before we’ve even managed to walk?”
Chances are, you’ve already used a satellite today. Satellites make it possible for us to stream our favorite shows, call and text a friend, check weather and navigation apps, and make an online purchase. Satellites also monitor the Earth’s climate, the extent of agricultural crops, wildlife habitats, and impacts from natural disasters.
As we’ve found more uses for them, satellites have exploded in number. Today, there are more than 10,000 satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. Another 5,000 decommissioned satellites drift through this region, along with over 100 million pieces of debris comprising everything from spent rocket stages to flecks of spacecraft paint.
For MIT’s Richard Linares, the rapid ballooning of satellites raises pressing questions: How can we safely manage traffic and growing congestion in space? And at what point will we reach orbital capacity, where adding more satellites is not sustainable, and may in fact compromise spacecraft and the services that we rely on?
“It is a judgement that society has to make, of what value do we derive from launching more satellites,” says Linares, who recently received tenure as an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “One of the things we try to do is approach these questions of traffic management and orbital capacity as engineering problems.”
Linares leads the MIT Astrodynamics, Space Robotics, and Controls Lab (ARCLab), a research group that applies astrodynamics (the motion and trajectory of orbiting objects) to help track and manage the millions of objects in orbit around the Earth. The group also develops tools to predict how space traffic and debris will change as operators launch large satellite “mega-constellations” into space.
He is also exploring the effects of space weather on satellites, as well as how climate change on Earth may limit the number of satellites that can safely orbit in space. And, anticipating that satellites will have to be smarter and faster to navigate a more cluttered environment, Linares is looking into artificial intelligence to help satellites autonomously learn and reason to adapt to changing conditions and fix issues onboard.
“Our research is pretty diverse,” Linares says. “But overall, we want to enable all these economic opportunities that satellites give us. And we are figuring out engineering solutions to make that possible.”
Grounding practical problems
Linares was born and raised in Yonkers, New York. His parents both worked as school bus drivers to support their children, Linares being the youngest of six. He was an active kid and loved sports, playing football throughout high school.
“Sports was a way to stay focused and organized, and to develop a work ethic,” Linares says. “It taught me to work hard.”
When applying for colleges, rather than aim for Division I schools like some of his teammates, Linares looked for programs that were strong in science, specifically in aerospace. Growing up, he was fascinated with Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” docuseries. And being close to Manhattan, he took regular trips to the Hayden Planetarium to take in the center’s immersive projections of space and the technologies used to explore it.
“My interest in science came from the universe and trying to understand our place within it,” Linares recalls.
Choosing to stay close to home, he applied to in-state schools with strong aeronautical engineering departments, and happily landed at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo), where he would ultimately earn his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, all in aerospace engineering.
As an undergraduate, Linares took on a research project in astrodynamics, looking to solve the problem of how to determine the relative orientation of satellites flying in formation.
“Formation flying was a big topic in the early 2000s,” Linares says. “I liked the flavor of the math involved, which allowed me to go a layer deeper toward a solution.”
He worked out the math to show that when three satellites fly together, they essentially form a triangle, the angles of which can be calculated to determine where each satellite is in relation to the other two at any moment in time. His work introduced a new controls approach to enable satellites to fly safely together. The research had direct applications for the U.S. Air Force, which helped to sponsor the work.
As he expanded the research into a master’s thesis, Linares also took opportunities to work directly with the Air Force on issues of satellite tracking and orientation. He served two internships with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, one at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the other in Maui, Hawaii.
“Being able to collaborate with the Air Force back then kind of grounded the research in practical problems,” Linares says.
For his PhD, he turned to another practical problem of “uncorrelated tracks.” At the time, the Air Force operated a network of telescopes to observe more than 20,000 objects in space, which they were working to label and record in a catalog to help them track the objects over time. But while detecting objects was relatively straightforward, the challenge came in correlating a detected object with what was already in the catalog. In other words, is what they were seeing something they had already seen?
Linares developed image analysis techniques to identify key characteristics of objects such as their shape and orientation, which helped the Air Force “fingerprint” satellites and pieces of space debris, and track their activity — and potential for collisions — over time.
After completing his PhD, Linares worked as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Naval Observatory. During that time he expanded his aerospace work to other areas including space weather, using satellite measurements to model how Earth’s ionosphere — the upper layer of the atmosphere that is ionized by the sun’s radiation — affects satellite drag.
He then accepted a position as assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. For the next three years, he continued his research in modeling space weather, tracking space objects and coordinating satellites to fly in swarms.
Making space
In 2018, Linares made the move to MIT.
“I had a lot of respect for the people and for the history of the work that was done here,” says Linares, who was especially inspired by the legendary Charles Stark “Doc” Draper, who developed the first inertial guidance systems in the 1940s that would enable the self-navigation of airplanes, submarines, satellites, and spacecraft for decades to come. “This was essentially my field, and I knew MIT was the best place to continue my career.”
As a junior faculty member in AeroAstro, Linares spent his first years focused on an emerging challenge: space sustainability. Around that time, the first satellite constellations were launching into low-Earth orbit with SpaceX’s Starlink, which aimed to provide global internet coverage via a huge network of several thousand coordinating satellites. The launching of so many satellites, into orbits that already held other active and nonactive satellites, along with millions of pieces of space debris, raised questions about how to safely manage the satellite traffic and how much traffic an orbit can sustain.
“At what level do we reach a tipping point, where we have too many satellites in certain orbital regimes?” Linares says. “It was kind of a known problem at the time, but there weren’t many solutions.”
Linares’ group applied an understanding of astrodynamics, and the physics of how objects move in space, to figure out the best way to pack satellites in orbital “shells,” or lanes that would most likely prevent collisions. They also developed a state-of-the-art model of orbital traffic, that was able to simulate the trajectories of more than 10 million individual objects in space. Previous models were much more limited in the number of objects they could accurately simulate. Linares’ open-source model, called the MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tool, or MoCAT, could account for the millions of pieces of space debris, in addition to the many intact satellites in orbit.
The tools that his group has developed are used today by satellite operators to plan and predict safe spacecraft trajectories. His team is continuing to work on problems of space traffic management and orbital capacity. They are also branching out into space robotics. The team is testing ways to teleoperate a humanoid robot, which could potentially help to build future infrastructure and carry out long-duration tasks in space.
Linares is also exploring artificial intelligence, including ways that a satellite can autonomously “learn” from its experience and safely adapt to uncertain environments.
“Imagine if each satellite had a virtual Doc Draper onboard that could do the de-bugging that we did from the ground during the Apollo missions,” Linares says. “That way, satellites would become instantaneously more robust. And it’s not taking the human out of the equation. It’s allowing the human to be amplified. I think that’s within reach.”
Every time I’ve written about Meta’s AI-enabled glasses, I invariably get asked these questions: Why do you even want these? Why do you want smart glasses that can play music or misidentify native flora in a weirdly cheery voice? I am a lifelong Ray-Ban Wayfarer wearer, and I’m also WIRED’s resident Meta wearer. I grab a pair of Meta glasses whenever I leave the house because I like being able to use one device instead of two or three on a walk. With Meta glasses, I can wear sunglasses and workout headphones in one!
Meta sold more than 7 million pairs in 2025. Take a look at any major outdoor or sporting event, and you’ll see more than a few people wearing these to record snippets for Instagram or TikTok. Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica has made smart glasses accessible, stylish, and useful and is undoubtedly the reason why Google, and now Apple, are trying to horn in on the market. After the notable flop that is the Apple Vision Pro, Apple is recalibrating its face-wearable strategy, moving away from augmented reality (AR) toward simpler, display-less, and hopefully good-looking glasses.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be careful how you use these glasses. Meta doesn’t have the greatest track record on privacy, and the company has continued to push forward with policies that are questionable at best. Even if you’re not concerned that face recognition will allow Meta to target immigrants or enable stalkers to find their victims, at the very least, people really do not like the idea that you could start recording them at any moment.
Probably the biggest hurdle to wearing Meta glasses is that even doing so seems like a gross violation of the social contract. After all, these are Mark Zuckerberg’s “pervert glasses.” When I pop these on my head, I’ve had friends (and my spouse) recoil and say, “I have apps to warn me away from people like you.” The best part, though, is that Oakley and Ray-Ban already make really great sunglasses. Even if the battery runs out or you don’t use Meta AI at all, these are stellar at shading your eyes from the sun.
Anyway, if you decide to try them, here’s what you should get. If you do chicken out, check out our buying guides to the Best Smart Glasses or the Best Workout Headphones for more.
Table of Contents
Best Overall
-
Photograph: Boone Ashworth
-
%2520Shiny%2520Black%2520Green%2520Lenses.png)
Ray-Ban
Meta Glasses (Gen 2)
Last year, Meta upgraded the original Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarers that became a smash hit. These are Meta’s entry-level glasses, and they come in a variety of lens styles. You can order them with clear lenses, prescription lenses, transition lenses, or the OG sunglass lenses, as well as in a variety of fits, including standard, large, or high-bridge frames. Improvements to this generation include an upgrade to a 12-MP camera and up to eight hours of battery life; writer Boone Ashworth’s testing clocked in at five to six hours.
I tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.
A Better Birdhouse
I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.
If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.
Stylish Smart Lights
Govee
Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights
I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)
Fresh Bulbs
Cync
Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38
If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.
Remote-Controlled Garage
If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.
Smart Shades
The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.
Invisible Swaps
Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.
Notre Dame, Villanova to start men’s, women’s hoops season in Rome
2026 NBA playoffs: Western Conference first-round takeaways
Sarah Ferguson speaks out over Beatrice, Eugenie troubles: ‘Difficult’
-
Fashion4 days agoFrance’s LVMH Q1 revenue falls 6%, shows resilience amid Iran war
-
Entertainment1 week agoPalace left in shock as Prince William cancels grand ceremony
-
Sports7 days agoThe case for Man United’s Fernandes as Premier League’s best
-
Business7 days agoUK could adopt EU single market rules under new legislation
-
Sports1 week agoLamar Jackson hits back at critics with faithful message on social media
-
Entertainment5 days agoIs Claude down? Here’s why users are seeing errors
-
Fashion7 days agoEnergy emerges as biggest cost driver in textile margins
-
Business1 week agoRoad accidents: a massive economic challenge | The Express Tribune