Events at a South London hospital this week could mark a
major milestone in NHS IT.
Queen Mary's Sidcup NHS Trust was yesterday (28 November) due to
go live with a patient administration system supplied by IDX and BT
Capital Care Alliance.
If successful, it would be the first major system Connecting for
Health, which manages the £6.2bn NHS national IT programme, has
delivered in London after more than a year of delays.
If the migration is not a success, the consequences for
suppliers could be severe. In October, Connecting for Health chief
executive Richard Granger told Bloomberg news service that BT's
performance at Queen Mary's would be an indication of whether it
had the contract under control.
Granger has already fined BT for under-performance on a separate
NHS contract to build a broadband network, and in July he warned
that "predictable events would occur" if it did not get some
substantial functionality from IDX before the end of the summer.
This was widely interpreted as a threat to cancel BT's contract for
London.
As Computer Weekly went to press, Queen Mary's was confident the
migration would go smoothly. "Everything is on schedule," a
spokeswoman said.
BT Capital Care Alliance also expressed confidence that the
migration was on course.