NHS head defends major IT delays

The head of the NHS has defended delays that have kept a key system from going live in the £12.7bn upgrade of health service IT.

Six years into the national NHS IT programme (NPfIT) the Lorenzo care records systems have still not gone live anywhere in the country, leaving health trusts in the North, Midlands and the East to rely on interim systems while they wait for Lorenzo to be deployed.

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The Lorenzo system has been deployed for testing at trusts in Bradford, Morecambe Bay and south Birmingham, where it is expected to go live during the summer.

At a Public Accounts Committee hearing into the National Programme for IT committee member Richard Bacon MP questioned the extensive delays to Lorenzo.

NHS CEO David Nicholson defended the delays in delivering the NPfIT, saying the project was "incredibly ambitious, nowhere in the world delivers an IT system quite like the one we want for the NHS" but said the health service had "learnt lessons".

The deadline for the completion of the NPfIT has slipped five years and been revised three times.

Interviews for a new NHS CIO will take place at the end of June and for the project director for the NPfIT at the beginning of July, the hearing heard.

The two £200,000 per year posts will fill the IT director general post vacated by Richard Granger in January this year.