Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

Connecting for Health, the agency which runs the National Programme for IT in the NHS [NPfIT], has unilaterally changed the wording of a public statement it agreed with 23 academics.

Officials at Connecting for Health had agreed the statement at their meeting with academics at Richmond House, Whitehall, headquarters of the Department of Health, in April 2006.

The meeting had been arranged so that representatives of the 23 academics could discuss an open letter they had written to the House of Commons' Health Committee. The letter expressed concerns about the NPfIT and called for an independent technical audit of the programme. The meeting was attended by Richard Granger, head of Connecting for Health, BT and others.

When Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre went live with a pioneering project under the auspices of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT, the trust's board was unaware that the system had been at the centre of a “serious untoward incident” at another hospital trust.

This is one of the findings of a joint investigation by Computer Weekly and Channel Four News. The film, which can be seen here, was broadcast on Channel Four News on Monday 11 December 2006.

The retirement of Lord Warner - the minister responsible for the National Programme for IT [NPfiT] in the NHS - is no surprise but it is still unwelcome news.

This blog reported – here - that Lord Warner was beginning to pick up some first hand knowledge of how things on the programme were going, hearing some of the criticisms from front-line staff, and no longer relying on briefings from officials.

Some will speculate that another factor in Warner’s decision was his seemingly jocular promise on BBC’s Newsnight earlier this year to resign if take-up by doctors of the Choose and Book part of the NPfIT fails to meet government targets by March 2007. It has become clear that the target will not be met.

Lord Warner’s retirement is unwelcome because he is another minister responsible for the NPfIT to relinquish that responsibility – the eleventh.

If it all goes wrong with a £12.4bn programme can anyone who has been elected be held responsible? By the time the main parts of the programme are due to have been delivered a new administration will be in place and Tony Blair will certainly have been long gone.

If the government wants to remain unaccountable for the NPfIT it will appoint as Lord Warner’s replacement another minister who is due for retirement – Lord Warner is 66.

The original Senior Responsible Owner of the NPfIT was Sir John Pattison - who retired soon after the programme was underway.

The Choose and Book system, a central part of the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT], went down for much of Monday after a new release of software was installed two days before on Saturday, 9 December 2006.

The problems will not endear GPs to the Choose and Book system. Many of them believe the system will add to their workload. Others will get used to Choose and Book, particularly as they are being paid to use it.

I have a footnote to Downing Street’s announcement that the health minister Lord Warner – the minister in charge of the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] – is retiring this month, December 2006. Only three ago, in November 2006, John Oughton, Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce, which oversees IT in central government, told the Public Accounts Committee that Lord Warner was receiving weekly briefings on the NPfIT.

Choose and Book failed for much of Monday 11 December as reported on this blog earlier and on E-Health Insider, I now understand that it was a severity one incident. Atos Origin, the main supplier of Choose and Book, has apologised.

On 18 December 2006, Paul Gray, Acting Chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, appeared before the House of Commons’ Public Account Committee and was questioned on the performance of the department’s main IT supplier Capgemini - and about the billions of pounds due to be paid to the company.

In an article in Computer Weekly today - 19 December 2006 - we argue why the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] matters.

Published exclusively on this blog is a confidential NHS paper on the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

The paper is important because it is an objective analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the NPfIT by senior IT executives on the front line. Its authors work for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which is the largest NHS trust in the UK.