Patients will be able to look up the performance of medical teams at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (N&N) online from early next year when a radical programme is rolled out to make the hospital the most transparent in the country.

The N&N will be the first in the UK to publish performance figures for its medical teams on its website, going further than a government drive to publish individual surgeons' performance.

The hospital hopes that putting out data from all its departments will drive up performance. It is commonly done in the United States but not in the UK.

Dr James Hernon, who is leading the project for the N&N, said: 'If you publish outcomes they tend to gradually improve year on year. The aim is to give patients informed choice.'

Each department is producing its own list of measures for their specialism and providing the data. The figures are then compared to national statistics to see how the hospital is doing.

By collecting and publishing the figures, the hospital hopes to spot any outliers where it is performing particularly well or poorly.

The move was welcomed by the hospital board on Friday.

Chairman John Fry said: 'I think it is wonderful. In education, publishing huge amounts of data has led to huge change.'