The NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT – Experts give their views

Leslie Willcocks, Professor in Information Systems at the London School of Economics, says of the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] that it is at the “outer reaches of “at the outer reaches of known territory”. But is it right for the government to use public money to take such immense risks with public money – not to mention patient safety?

Leslie Willcocks makes the point that there’s a natural tendency on huge projects for civil servants and ministers to downplay their full cost for fear of frightening off the funders. In this video he talks about the strengths and weaknesses of the NPfIT, the lessons to be learned, and refers to a series of expert views on the programme that are published in the Journal of Information Technology.