A NEW device to give staff access to medical information at any time is to be piloted in Worcestershire.

The General Packet Radio System is a small laptop device that has permanent access to the Worcestershire NHS Trust network and the internet.

The GPRS device will not need to be connected to phone lines and will allow medical staff, such as nurses and physiotherapists, to access files and information about patients and treatments wherever they are.

"The point is that staff will have access at any time or place," said Ian McGregor, the Head of Informatics at Worcestershire Community and Mental Health NHS Trust.

The testing period of the GPRS will begin in September and will last three months.

A team of 20 multi-disciplinary staff will each be given one of the £600 laptop devices.

A project board from the Health Trust and representatives from BT, Cellnet and iSoft will decide if it would be viable to fully adopt the system.

"We are keeping an open mind about what the results will be," said Mr McGregor.

Because of the sensitive nature of the information that the laptop devices can access, the question of security was raised at a meeting of the Worcestershire Community and Mental Health NHS Trust.

"The data will be encrypted at both ends which will make it impossible to access" said Mr McGregor.

For added security the laptop devices will not store the medical information. They will only be able to access the information already safely stored on the Trust network.

If the system was adopted the Trust would consider using a further security feature that would require the thumbprint of the member of staff to access the network.