By Andy McCue, 5 December 2007 14:10
NEWS
The head of the £12.4bn NHS IT programme will step down from his role in charge of the project at the end of this year.
NHS IT director-general Richard Granger announced his plan to leave his role in charge of the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) and Connecting for Health (CfH) in June and the timetable for his departure has now been confirmed.
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No replacement for Granger has been appointed yet and an NHS CfH spokeswoman said there will be a review of the "management arrangements" for taking the NHS IT programme forward.
This will form part of NHS CEO David Nicholson's wider review of how the health service uses informatics and technology to improve patient care.
The CfH spokeswoman told silicon.com: "We expect to be able to outline this before the end of the year. In the meantime, Richard Granger and his team continue to do an excellent job in leading the programme."
Former Andersen and Deloitte management consultant Granger took on the NHS IT role in 2002 after delivering the London Congestion Charge scheme.
Click here for the top 10 quotes by Granger.
Comments
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1. anonymous
I saw him at a house of lords review and although he is very abrasive and did evade a couple of questions, you have to admire him for straight talking and trying to drag the NHS into the 21st Century. Frankly the more I learn about the NHS the more, as a business owner, I despair. I'm sure there are lots of things he didn't get quite right, but at least he's had a good go and sorting the shambles out. Shame he doesn't have much in the way of results to show for it. Looks to me like he upset one too many people.
2. anonymous
I'm a GP with a long standing interest in IT.
When NPfIT was announced and he was appointed, there was a lot of cautious optomism that secondary care IT might, finally, be brought up to the level of GP IT.
It is a shame that he could not recognise the areas of good practice already well established - in hospitals as well as general practice - and build on them, but insisted on the nuclear solution of imposing central contracts for single systems, and not building on interoperability.
Just look at the mess in Yorkshire and the Humber SHA: their board papers state that their IM&T strategy is driven by the need to avoid financial penalties for failing to deliver the volume of contracts demanded by the LSP contracts. Lorenzo (the secondary care product) is still not available - initial delivery date 2005 - so primary care gets hammered...
*is this competence*?
and while I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that introducing modern IT into the NHS is A Good Idea, IT does need to serve the needs of the organisation.
3. anonymous
Good. Now lets get someone in who knows what they are doing. His whole strategy was wrong from the start, what has he achieved? Unacceptable delays in the programme, and huge costs which could have be avoided. But no one listens to the little guy. I remember a meeting where we tried to convince him that a national programme was to huge to even contemplate. I sympathise with the person who takes over it is a huge task and one I believe that will never end unless the government step in a cancel it as they do with so many other failing brain-childs of theirs. Do we have to keep pouring money into something we are never going to achieve?