NHS IT project pulled up by hiatus The £12.7bn National Programme for IT which aims to transform health service technology and provide electronic records for all patients is not dead in the water and delays are inevitable in such a large project. The government was forced into declaring the project is not dead just having a liedown after a story on the …
I'll remember that when my next IT contract gets to the point it is 4 years late and billions over budget.... like anyone in the private sector could get away with that.
This is a big fat fail for government IT projects and they should be stopped from even suggesting new IT projects until this is complete.... and i don't care if said new IT project has the world DATABASE in it.
[simpsons episode about monorails comes to mind]
Let me pick my own team of trusted geeks, give us 5 million each for the work (not including expenses) and we'll have it running for you by next year.
Too many managers and pork-snatchers have forever spoiled the new-NHS broth, time to throw it out and bring some proper chefs in.
``12 billion quid to work out that you can't build a big enough pipe to transfer thousands of high def xrays every day and that you can't get doctors to standardise their notes..''
As it happens, PACS, the system that handles medical imaging, has been up and running for several years without too much drama. Most X-Rays (and MRI and CAT and Ultrasound and so on) are used within the hospital that generated them, so only a small proportion are moved between organisations, and most imagining equipment made in recent years is digital anyway.
An acquaintance who was at the time a consultant radiologist was one of the early adopters, and she said that by sticking rigidly to the precise requirements of moving digital images from devices to displays and keeping copies where required, they brought the whole thing in on time and under budget.
As to the rest of your comment, however, it's all true.
Paris. Because she knows about distributing digital images of her anatomy.
There's loads of system live and these have been live for a few years now. There's a huge difference between primary care and secondary care systems.
PCTs are already downloading from and submitting data to the systems.
People who aren't involved in the project don't have a clue of what these systems are and what they are used for. If this project was scrapped then PCTs would not get paid, 18 week wait targets wouldn't be analysed etc...
If you started with an Acute solution that was designed for the NHS, rather than trying to ram in a solution better suited to other geographies; if you build on the interfaces and specifications for the Spine services, for reporting and for the best of breed business processes, you might have a chance of delivering a system that Trusts would accept.
...after a recent Private Eye exposed them as basically writing what the government wanted them to. Not very independent and very, very weak at actually challenging projects, IT or otherwise, that were going down the pan.
NHS IT may not be dead, yet, but if even BT are starting to take stock it must be time to measure up for a box.
"Many elements of the National Programme for IT are advancing and some are complete."
So lots of them are going backwards and most are incomplete.
"The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead is still suffering glitches since.."
glitches = fuck ups by the software blacksmith - send it back and get him to hammer it some more.
@Loads of systems
"People who aren't involved in the project don't have a clue of what these systems are and what they are used for. If this project was scrapped then PCTs would not get paid, 18 week wait targets wouldn't be analysed etc..."
Yeees. So this is all about creating a giant billing system to facilitate integration of american multinationals (with labour politicians on their boards) into the NHS, whilst allowing the govt to play at silly buggers with targets. There are those who (still!) think it's about patient care - glad we've cleared that up.
One of the things this system is doing that people don't have a clue about is that it is illegally pumping peoples hospital records to a private company. (waves at Dr Foster)
So, it's nice for you on the gravy train, but I'm not sure you'll get too much sympathy from the general public.
"“It is a little bit too early to pronounce the programme dead.”
“..to say everyone is walking away from it is a bit premature, probably”"
It'll be dead soon, and then people will walk away from it.
The good news: only ID cards and contact point to go, modulo storing all electronic communications.
Of course, the NHS should have contracted out all the actual development to the private sector, because unlike the awful public sector, they have a reputation for being on budget and on time.
Fuckwit. That's exactly what they did do. It's your blessed private sector who fucked it up. Repeatedly. I can't believe the shoddy shite these providers have produced. I'm just a server and infrastructure guy but I could knock up better and more secure stuff with a bunch of VB Scripts and an SQL Server than the "whaddyamean your users don't run as administrators? How else is our software supposed to work" crud I do have to work with.
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