Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

Glyn Hayes, chairman of the Health Informatics Forum at the British Computer Society, gave a brief but frank assessment of NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] at a Westminster forum this week.

Hayes is leading a review of the NPfIT for the Conservative Party.

With Guy Hains, President of CSC's European Group, Hayes spoke about the NPfIT to an audience of Parliamentarians, IT specialists, clinicians and others at the Conservative Technology Forum at Portcullis House, Westminster, on Monday evening.

One of his main messages to an incoming government is not to assume that an IT-based modernisation of the NHS is easy.

"Would a changed government want to cancel the programme? I think the plea is to understand one thing more than anything else: it is very difficult to implement IT into healthcare anywhere in the world and it is even more difficult in England than a lot of other places.

"It is one of the most difficult areas of human existence to put systems into. One of the major problems with the national programme is that politicians at the time thought that if they threw money at it, it would happen in a couple of years.

"It couldn't because it is so difficult. Can they [an incoming government] please remember if it is difficult; and can they please remember there is no magic bullet."

Martyn Thomas is visiting professor of software engineering at Oxford University Computing Laboratory. One of the few in the software community to have strong engineering credentials, he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) and of both UK professional computing institutions, the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)

Thomas was one of 23 leading academics who called for an independent and published review of the NHS's £12.7bn National Programme for IT. 

He has now written a guest blog post on a report published by the Royal Academy of Engineering on 31 July 2009. "Every important IT project should be led by a Chartered Engineer or a Chartered IT professional accredited in systems engineering," says Thomas.

Tom Brooks is a semi-retired healthcare management consultant who attended the Labour Party conference in Brighton. He's a respected commentator on NHS IT.

At a fringe meeting at the conference Brooks listened to Mike O'Brien, the minister responsible for the NPfIT.

O'Brien made a point of saying that his personal view was that NPfIT was achievable though many in his department considered the programme "over-ambitious".

Matthew Swindells, who led a Whitehall review of NHS informatics, is the new head of the British Computer Society's Health Informatics Forum. He is managing director for health at consultancy Tribal and has been NHS chief information officer.

Dr Glyn Hayes had successfully chaired the BCS's Health Informatics Forum. He led a review on NHS IT for the Tories and more recently has sat on a medical advisory board set up by iSoft, one of the NPfIT suppliers.