A commonly voiced fear that patients will become overly persistent emailers and stalk their GPs around the clock if practices introduce patient portals has been dismissed by early research into the technology's use in New Zealand.

Tom Love of health policy and analysis research firm Sapere Research Group told the Health Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ) conference in Christchurch yesterday that as well as dismissing fears about persistent emailers, the research showed that another concern – that patients would start bugging their GPs by emailing questions of a clinical nature – is also somewhat unfounded.