Mr. Peter Lennon:

That goes to the heart of the concept of interoperability between systems. Health information standards provide for consistent specifications for systems to talk to each other. It is a big project. That figure of 1,700 legacy systems is likely to be significantly reduced but there are a number of legacy systems out there. That is why moving immediately to a wholly digitised system just is not feasible. The implementation plan that will be put in place, if it is to be credible to those who are affected by it, will have to set out a realistic timeline for when it will be possible for all systems to talk to each other.