The NPfIT minister Mike O'Brien revealed in a Parliamentary reply yesterday that there are 174 regular users of the Lorenzo 1 system at five NHS trusts.
The Lorenzo system is supplied by services company CSC and software supplier iSoft under the National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
This number of users will increase when NHS Bury goes live with Lorenzo next month. But MPs are still likely to consider the number very low given the cost to taxpayers of the system.
Taking O'Brien's figure of 174 together with £2m as a conservative figure for the cost per site of installing the Lorenzo system, the cost per user of the system is about £57,000.
If you take the cost per concurrent user - 19 according to the minister - the cost per user rises to about £526,000.
It may also be worth bearing in mind that two of the five trusts have been live with Lorenzo for more than a year.
About £4bn in total has been spent centrally on the NPfIT and ministers have trumpeted the Care Records Service as the main aim of the programme.
Lorenzo is one of two main NPfIT Care Records Service products to be delivered to trusts in England, the other being Cerner's Millennium.
Lorenzo was due to have been delivered several years ago under the NPfIT. A typical NHS trust has about 1,000 to 5,000 users of its hospital administration system.
This is O'Brien's reply in full, based on a question by Conservative MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee:
Richard Bacon MP: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what his latest estimate is of the number of users of the Lorenzo software system at (a) Five Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust, (b) Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, (c) University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, (d) Hereford Hospitals Trust and (e) South Birmingham Primary Care Trust;
(2) what his latest estimate is of the highest number of live concurrent users of the Lorenzo software system across English NHS trusts (a) at any one time and (b) on any one day. [295790]
Mr. Mike O'Brien:
The numbers of regular users of Release 1 of the Lorenzo software system in the national health service bodies concerned are as follows:
Five Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust - 43
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - 12
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust - 96
Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust - 7
South Birmingham Primary Care Trust -16
O'Brien added:
"These figures exclude other registered users who use the system only occasionally.
"The highest number of live concurrent users across English NHS trusts at any one time, to date, is 19.
"This occurred on 6 October 2009. The number of concurrent users of the system is lower than the aggregate number of regular users because clinicians spend the majority of their time working directly with patients.
"Time spent using the system is relatively short, and in most care settings, users will log in and log out of the system repeatedly throughout the day."
Links:
NPfIT Lorenzo - is the cost per user frightening? - IT Projects BlogiSoft debuts Lorenzo - e-HealthNews
Use of iSoft grows at Hereford Hospitals - IT Projects Blog
NHS IT glitches force six-month wait
Minister renews faith in Lorenzo and Cerner - IT Projects Blog