Will they, won’t they? The future of IT in the NHS
Latest developments in the national programme
As one London hospital painstakingly eradicates a virus from all 5,000 of its PCs and strives to continue to provide key services, the NHS is struggling to secure a successor to Fujitsu for the southern region in its National Programme for IT.
Although BT has submitted a bid for the contract, the delays to their roll-out of Cerner Millennium in London and attendant costs incurred by two trusts has made negotiations difficult. Some people in the NHS and the health informatics industry have questioned Connecting for Health’s implementation model and the achievements of Local Service Providers so far.
After the initial success of Choose & Book and its integration with GP clinical systems like EMIS and Vision, as well as many hospital Patient Administration Systems, the programme seems to have slowed down considerably. There is speculation that trusts in the southern region will be left to install their own PAS systems rather than relying on the LSPs.
“At one time we had more than 150 trainers across the country at any one time working on the project” says Training Synergy director Dan Hanlon. “Now we are finding that we are working on smaller localised projects with PCTs and acute trusts themselves. The advantage for the trusts is that they can draw on our immense experience of end to end clinical systems implementations and have cost effective training tailored to local issues and workarounds”
Story Date
Monday, December 01, 2008
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