David Cameron has blasted the government's
£12.4bnNHS
National Programme for IT (NPfIT), saying that
ministers have fallen for the sales pitch of IT suppliers and
consultants who have cut corners.
"I have said before that in their drive to 'modernise' the NHS,
Labour have not improved it, so much as ripped out its heart and
installed a malfunctioning computer instead," said the Conservative
Party leader, at a
speech at Trafford General Hospital.
"It is one of the most shameful and disgraceful aspects of
Labour's record: the way they fall for the sales patter of the
management consultants and the big IT firms, who make them think
they can cut corners to success."
He said that the NHS is suffering from shoddy jargon-ridden
schemes served up on Microsoft Powerpoint and swallowed whole by
the people who are supposed to be custodians of the health service
and custodians of taxpayers' money.
He also criticised the Government's proposal for a vast,
centralised, NHS database saying that recent events have shown how
dangerous government IT systems can be if mis-managed.
"Of course we need different NHS professionals to be able to
access medical records. But those records should be owned by the
patient, and stored locally, under the control and protection of
his GP. We need local servers with interoperability," said
Cameron.