NHS IT

(By Richard Holway 6.00pm Sunday 23rd Aug 09) For the many HotViews readers interested in (indeed involved in!) the NHS IT project, there was a very good article in the FT on 20th Aug – NHS Project on the critical list – which follows on from the Conservative pledge to scrap the central patient records database. We covered this likelihood in our The Effect of a Conservative Government on UK SITS AnalystView a few months back.

The FT article is a good description of what went wrong. We were pleased that the article also highlighted some of its successes (most notable being Picture Archiving) Unwinding the contractual side of the central database is going to be extremely expensive and we, the taxpayers, will have nothing to show from that bit.

On the other hand, this will be a major opportunity for the many local suppliers to the NHS – an opportunity already recognised by the irrepressible Vin Murria at ACS.