By Dan Ilett, 5 September 2006 12:55
NEWS
The public sector's spending watchdog is to launch another inquiry into the NHS' multi-billion pound computer overhaul.
The decision comes just weeks after the press published a leaked government document that said hospitals would be "better off" without a national IT upgrade. Those comments followed disruptions to computer services in 80 hospital trusts after the power supply to a data centre was interrupted.
A spokesman for the National Audit Office (NAO), which is to carry out the report, said the topic has not yet been set: "With a large ongoing project like this there will be a series of reports. We are in the early stages but there wouldn't be a report until next year."
This summer, healthcare software company iSoft's rollout for the clinical records software at the heart of the programme was criticised, a review finding there is "no believable plan" for its development - as the company's financial solidity was also questioned.
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The last NAO report on the NHS IT project, published in June, concluded that costs are likely to reach £12.4bn by 2014.
That figure includes the £6.2bn for the main fixed-price IT contracts; £382m for new projects; £239m on additional services; and £1.9bn on other expenditure by NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) on centrally managed projects and services. Another £337m will go on replacing core contracts which expire before the end of the 10-year period to 2014, and £3.4bn in expenditure by local NHS organisations on IT and training.
The report said: "The speed of the negotiations and the inclusion of a sound balance of incentives and penalties within the contracts have put NHS CfH in a strong position in its relationships with suppliers and one that is stronger than previous government procurement practice."
It added the NHS should tell staff how and when the project will affect them, so setbacks and changes of priority do not cause a loss of confidence.
Director general of NHS IT Richard Granger said at the time: "If this was easy it would have been done years ago. Computerising the NHS is something that has proved elusive for several previous programmes. We have not repeated the mistakes of the past."
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Swain (M.R.S.A)
Can I have a job.... on the team to run the inquiry into the cost over-run of the project team investigating the team that was investigating the overspend on the NHS feasability study.
Put another way
Stick loads of money in my bank so I can do nothing all day with the rest of the public sector hangers on,then go and live abroad where there is some decent health care.
2. Richard
What does this fiasco tell us about other official reports which were so "kind" to the current government?
3. anonymous
Isn't it time the Government stopped pretending to know all about IT? I have lost count of all their fiascoes we have seen in the last ten years or so. The money wasted would surely have funded the NHS for years!
Why not engage a SMALL but highly competent team of IT experts with no hardware axes to grind and totally independent of any software house with a cat-in-hell's chance of doing the work? Let them sit down with the real end-users and define realistic projects that do what the users want, nothing more and nothing less.
Let their work be the basis of a well written and watertight project specification, to be managed by a SMALL but competent team of real Project Managers who understand the project and are totally focussed, 24 hours a day if need be, on delivering excellence.
These people should be totally impervious to the pressures of both hardware and software vendors, and the near inevitable 'project-creep' and 'wool-pulled-over-eyes' which seem to go completely unnoticed by today's Whitehall mandarins who are trying to manage these project for an hour or so per week - when they are not on holiday or abroad on 'fact-finding' missions!
4. anonymous
With all the other issues in Government and specifically labour projects at least the end product will benefit the UK and will eventually revolutionise the health service, unlike the Millennium Dome for instance. I think that it is incredible that people can't understand the importance of IT in health care. To be realistic how many Provate Sector IT projects are delivered on time and within budget, and how many are as large as the NPfIT or revolutionary??? Good luck to the NHS and their suppliers..