Failure with electronic patient records an indictment of health policy One would have hoped that it was simply the on-going friction between the two forces of conservatism and progressiveness that was all that was holding up, well, progress, in terms of the introduction of an electronic patient record (EPR) in Ireland. This thought occurred as the Medical Council referred a little obliquely to the fact that it was now over 20 years since the idea of an EPR was mooted. It is an indictment of health policy – one of the many – that we have failed at introducing an EPR in twenty years, but illustrative of why health policy is where it is, and what we need to do to change it.