The British Medical Association has said the government should suspend its new £600 million "Spine" project because of inaccurate data.

The project has been put together in order to let doctors have access to patient information regarding medication and allergies.

GPs using the project are able to enter data about a patient from their workplace and share it using the national database, allowing other medics to access it from other areas of the country in case of an emergency.

However managers involved in a pilot in Birmingham met last week and revealed one in 10 records in the database were not accurate.

Doctors were informed that 10% of the records had not been modified to allow for updates to medication or additional allergies.

Dr Robert Morley, a member of the BMA’s GPs committee, said: "Across the country we have been told that around two million records have been uploaded. If that rate of inaccuracies is repeated nationally...we’re talking about 200,000 patients."

"In most cases patients might get away with it, but ultimately when you’re talking about having the wrong medication details or details about allergic reaction, we could be talking about patient deaths."

The BMA’s GPs committee approved a motion which called for the immediate suspension of the system until the problems had been "fully investigated and satisfactorily resolved".