Connecting for Health, the agency that is implementing
the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT), has defended the low
take-up of Contact, one of the world's largest e-mail
systems.
The agency says that Contact is actively used by about 65,000 of
the health service's employees, compared with 25,000 who used an
e-mail service run by EDS whose contract was cancelled in March
2004
After a legal dispute with EDS, the NHS paid £9m in compensation
to the supplier for cancelling a contract which still had eight
years left to run. One of the reasons given by health officials for
cancelling EDS's contract was the low take-up of the e-mail
service. Cable and Wireless now runs the Contact e-mail system
under a contract worth between £50m and £90m.
Although Contact allows clinicians to send sensitive patient
information securely around the UK, so far there has been limited
demand, in part because trusts already have established local
e-mail systems. Part of the business case for Contact relies on the
savings arising from replacing local e-mail with the national
system.
But trust IT directors contacted by Computer Weekly said that
clinical staff preferred using local systems in which they have
established distribution lists.
About one in five IT staff interviewed by Mori as part of its
survey of NHS attitudes to the NPfIT had an unfavourable view of
Contact.
One NHS employee has written to Conservative shadow health
ministers claiming that Contact may end up as a "complete waste of
time and effort".
A spokesman for Connecting for Health said a "full marketing
campaign is due to start in October 2005" to encourage NHS
employees to use the Contact system.
He said, "At the time the EDS service was terminated 25,000
users were active on the service. Currently over 65,000 users are
active on the Contact service - despite no active marketing having
taken place."
The Contact directory is one of the largest in the world
containing over one million e-mail addresses from every NHS
organisation and region.
The spokesman said the low profile of Contact, as revealed in
the Mori survey, was "entirely consistent with the decision taken
not to market Contact until the product was well established
technically and the supplier and NHS had agreed a robust
value-for-money proposition for migrating staff on to the
service."
Survey 'rings alarm bells'
Andrew Murrison, Tory shadow health minister and a former GP,
has renewed his call for an independent review of the NHS's
National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. He says a recent survey by Mori
of the attitude of NHS staff to the NPfIT "rings alarm bells".
The Mori survey was commissioned by Connecting for Health, which
delivers the NPfiT. It showed there was strong support for the aims
of the NPfIT among those who were aware of the programme.
But Murrison said the survey also revealed a "serious lack of
awareness" together with concerns about the costs of
implementation.
Murrison said, "I am alarmed by the patchy awareness among
frontline staff revealed by this survey. Unless staff are fully
engaged with Connecting for Health it stands every chance of
joining the long list of government IT disasters."