NHS trusts splashed £260m on PCs in last four years In the last four years, NHS Trusts have spent £260m on 401,084 new PCs, at an average cost of £650.54 a box, according to Freedom of Information responses. More than 100 NHS trusts splashed £34m on new PCs in the first half of 2017 alone, according to an analysis of the data. However, despite splashing cash on new computers …
Works for one of the health departments, they've recently splurged large sums on quite sexy Lenovo Yoga books (FHD, SSD, 8GB RAM etc) and each got a 34" Dell monitor. Nice, right?
Then they go and install the same Windows 7 image they've been using for the past 5+ years..
So the problem isn't the kit, it's their insane approach of deployment.
"Lack of accountability and investment in cyber-security was blamed for the severity of the outbreak."
What were they supposed to invest? Hopes and dreams? There's nothing else left in the bank. Most NHS trusts would love to transform their IT estates and start taking advantage of some of the incredible precision medicine work that's coming out of the US. How, exactly, are they supposed to do that when they've been systematically stripped of their funding? They're already raiding capital budgets to pay for nurse training and begging the government for every penny they can spare.
When the layers of managers out-number the nurses and doctors, there is something seriously wrong. The real issue is the NHS is split into little managerial fiefdoms that look out for each other, think of it like Article 5 of the Nato treaty.
So the answer is quite simple - Audit the bureaucracy within the NHS.. but its a brave (or stupid) government who kicks that shit pile.
When I started in the current trust I work in the IT Dept, we were in the middle of the Windows 7 rollout, this was end of 2014.
The main issue with the build is that once it's set you then have to go through the management hoops of Change Control to add an updated piece of software, which will also have to be updated on all the devices that have already been built. Add on the fact you have multiple systems from various third parties that insist that you have certain versions of crap (see Java and IE) that if you don't have they won't support you.
Luckily for me, we are starting to roll out Windows based tablets in the Trust, which means updating to Windows 10, although the main estate won't be getting it until our current Microsoft licencing term ends, when we'll be looking to upgrade from Office 2010.
Hopefully our App-V server will have been upgraded to 5.1 by then!!
Which is of course a PITA.
However this also suggests that you need to batch up such changes and do "block updates." Test them as a batch and roll out the revised image as a complete chunk outside office hours, give that a large part of the NHS is still a 9/5 Mon/Fri operation.
Naturally that implies you get the time and support to allow those tests to get done.
The NHS (probably along with other medical organizations) is between a rock and hard place. It wants rock solid, avionics grade reliable software. OTOH unlike avionics they don't have full control over the code that runs on the estate, a lot of which is closed source
At some point NHS central management, and trust managements, will have to get their head round the idea that stuff changes and freezing software (and the OS it runs on) for a decade or more, is a very stupid idea. Putting penalty clauses in new software to force developers to be browser agnostic for example would be a start.
Commenting as an AC. I worked many years ago in an NHS Trust. The problem isn't onlt that there are little managerial fiefdoms.
The real power lies with the medical consultants. And they're not even employed by the NHS - they are contractors.
Add to this the GP surgeries which are run as small businesses which (again) are contractors to the NHS.
This stuff about hospital consultants is complete rubbish
Medical consultants are employees of the NHS Trust - so they are not contractors. GPs work in small businesses and are self-employed, but hospital consultants are straightforward employees and so are a normal part of the corporate machine.
'Real power' like in most businesses sits with the board and the executives. Consultants are an important groups of employees but they are not able to wield power any more than any other staff group.
"The real power lies with the medical consultants. And they're not even employed by the NHS - they are contractors."
Thanks for posting nonsense like this, it makes it incredibly easy to understand when someone has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Hospital consultants are direct employees of NHS trusts and these days have little to no say in operational matters, unless they also have a second hat as Head of a function. Frankly they just don't have the time.
"The real power lies with the medical consultants. And they're not even employed by the NHS - they are contractors."
That was true many years ago, now much less so. My late father was an NHS consultant, and when he started practising medicine as a junior hospital doctor in the 60's, consultants were god. They walked on water and their word was law. By the time he retired however, he and his colleagues were constantly battling the local Trust management, who had the final say on just about everything, even if it affected clinical outcomes. Not to say NHS managers are necessarily bad - some are very good, usually the ones that have clinical experience themselves as nurses or specialists. A lot aren't however, listening to some of my father's experiences.
And these days most consultants are NHS employees as far as I'm aware, so when push comes to shove, they have to do what they are told. And they even have to listen to HR...
"In the last four years(*), NHS Trusts have spent £260m on 401,084 new PCs,"
(*) I take it that this is four years since the beginning of 2013, ending December 2016.
"It revealed that since the beginning of 2013, NHS Trusts have disposed of 237,422 laptops and computers."
I take it that figure is for the same four years.
Whilst the NHS is a vast organisation with circa 1.7M staff, that is rather a large difference in numbers (approximately 164,000 PCs). Be interesting to find out the explanation.
In Scotland at least, NHS consultants are employed by the Health Board, but they "opted out" of Agenda for Change when everybody else had this foisted on them.
Certain (most?) Managers are also paid outwith the Agenda for Change structure.
Consultants and managers are expensive.
IT staff on the other hand are dead cheap... Wait, I think I see where your IT problem comes from...
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