Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with its electronic medical records.

One-year-old Robin Moffat, who was born profoundly deaf, was the first patient to have an electronic medical record and he was presented with a certificate to mark the occasion when he attended the cochlear implant outpatients department at Bradford Royal Infirmary to discuss a forthcoming operation.

Robin’s consultant, surgeon Dave Strachan, said: “We are delighted that Robin, and indeed the cochlear implant service’s outpatients, are the first patients to benefit from the transfer to electronic medical records – known as Going Digital – as this programme has huge benefits for all.

“Patients will get a more efficient and secure system while staff will be able to access records at the touch of a button, across all sites.

“For doctors like myself, digitalising records and accessing them via computers or iPads will be the single biggest and most significant change to clinical practice that we will see during our working lifetime.”

The drive to replace thousands of paper patient records at Bradford Royal Infirmary, St Luke’s Hospital and the Foundation Trust’s four community hospitals with electronic ones is a huge task.

Hospital managers believe it will take a decade before the organisation is paper-free.

Work has already started on the scanning of casualty cards in the accident and emergency department and interim software has been introduced to allow clinicians to view them.

The next milestone is the spring and summer of 2013, when the scanning of case notes stored in the ear, nose and throat and ophthalmology records library will begin. This will be followed by a roll-out of the system across the whole Foundation Trust, with staff from all departments getting access to digital patient records.

Brent Walker, chief information officer, said: “Launching our new electronic patient record system is the first major step forward in achieving our shared vision of providing a more efficient, paperless system.

“In the not-so-distant future, it will also mean that every patient’s clinical records will be scanned into the system on demand, prior to a consultation or elective inpatient or day case visit, ensuring easy retrieval of information at the touch of a button.”