Isn't it time to cut the NHS IT project some slack?

By Eilidh Beaton

So, let's get this straight - the NHS IT infrastructure project is a waste of both time and money, yes?

Sounds crazy, but that's the message that seems to be coming across in the media at the moment.  OK, so the National Programme for IT in the NHS is way over budget, having ballooned to a whopping £15bn, as well as being quite badly behind schedule. 

But let's get this into perspective. I think it's fair to say that a complete overhaul and modernisation of an archaic IT system of the magnitude of the NHS's was never going to be easy.  By attempting to collate 30 million patient records, it is after all the largest current IT project in the world - and believe me, it's pretty darn vital.

Having temped in a number of admin departments in NHS hospitals, including medical records, I was constantly bamboozled by the patient record system - row upon row of dog-eared files, loosely alphabetised or numerated, with random sheets of paper stuffed inside, and often not so much as a tag to hold them in place.  Little wonder that records go missing when hospitals have to send a paper file around the country padded out with Mrs Smith's medical history since 1942. 

OK, so the transition from paper to PC has not been exactly smooth.  For instance, an IT failure at the end of July, affecting 80 NHS trusts in the North West of England and West Midlands, caused appointment issues as well as admission and transfer problems.  However, while the system was restored with no lost data, you'd think fatalities had occurred judging by the way the story was covered in the news.

A re-structuring on this scale needs time and resources.  In the long run - and I know it feels a bit of an uphill marathon at the moment - it might just revitalise an institution that we in the UK take for granted and berate on a daily basis.  But more importantly, it's a system designed to save more lives.  As such, it's pretty harsh on the thousands of people within the NHS trying to make it work - isn't it time we stopped complaining and cut it a bit of slack?

Comments

[Bill Boyle]

Eilidh - congratulations on a very sensible but also critical blog. The press hysteria and lack of perspective which attachs to every single action of the NHS National Programme for IT is truly astonishing. Do journalists think that there are never setbacks in any major IT project? With the NHS everything is done in public and everyone has their opinion of what 'should' have been done. The logical conclusion of the majority of the press coverage is that the entire project should be scrapped. However when you ask journalists about it they throw their hands up in horror and say that would be a preposperous thing to do. It would be good if the press could consider the effects of constant ill-informed, headline-grabbing and short-term journalism.