Health records could be transferred to Google or Microsoft under a Tory government, The Times has learnt.

Patients will be given the option of moving their medical notes to private companies after the Conservatives said that they would replace Labour’s “centrally determined and unresponsive national IT system”.

The Tories hope that users will be able to choose from a range of private sector websites, possibly including those operated by Bupa, the healthcare provider. This has raised issues of privacy and security, with MPs and health professionals warning it could hamper doctors’ ability to access medical records quickly in an emergency.

It has also raised questions about the party’s links to Google. Steve Hilton, one of David Cameron’s closest advisers, is married to Rachel Whetstone, the company’s vicepresident of global communications and public affairs. Mr Cameron flew to San Francisco to address the Google Zeitgeist conference in 2007 at the company’s expense. Five months ago, it was announced that Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, was joining a Conservative business forum to advise on economic policy.

The drive is the first concrete proposal to emerge from the Tories’ “post-bureaucratic age” agenda, in which citizens would be given more government information in order to make choices about public services.

Mr Cameron has repeatedly promised to abolish large IT databases. The National Audit Office has said that Connecting for Health, the electronic patient records programme, will not be completed until 2014, four years late, and is expected to cost £12.4 billion. The recent termination of contracts with key software suppliers could add further to the cost.

Later this month, Maine will launch a two-year demonstration project of a statewide electronic health record network designed to improve health care quality, lower costs and help detect and track infectious disease outbreaks, the Bangor Daily News reports.

Officials are saying that a virus is to blame for compromising thousands of patient medical records at Alberta Health Services.

Legislation to establish a loan program to help Louisiana health care providers move to an electronic medical records system cleared a House panel Thursday.

The Data Interchange Standards Association is partnering with two firms to launch an online data certification service for providers, payers and vendors preparing to migrate to the HIPAA 5010 standards for electronic claims and related transactions.