September 22, 2011NHS told to abandon delayed Health Patient IT projectAn ambitious multibillion pound programme to create a computerised patient record system across the entire NHS is being scrapped, ministers have decided. NHS told to abandon delayed IT project | Society | The Guardian The NHS has spent billions of pounds on a computerised patient record and booking system, which has never worked properly. Photograph: Martin Godwin The £12.7bn National Programme for IT is being ended after years of delays, technical difficulties, contractual disputes and rising costs. Health secretary Andrew Lansley, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson have decided it is better to discontinue the programme rather than put even more money into it. The axe may be wielded , with ministers likely to criticise the last Labour government for initiating the project but doing too little to ensure it delivered its objectives. An announcement has been expected for months after the National Audit Office cast serious doubt on the wisdom of ploughing further money into the scheme and David Cameron told MPs in May that he was considering that advice. Whitehall sources confirmed the decision had been made because of coalition cost-cutting and the ongoing problems. "It was meant to be a very helpful thing for NHS staff and patients but instead has become this amazingly top-heavy, hideously expensive programme. The problem is, it didn't deliver", said a Department of Health source. "It was too ambitious, the technology kept changing, and loads and loads of money has been put into it. It's wasted a lot of money that should have been spent on nurses and improving patient care, and not on big international IT companies." The move comes after ministers received fresh advice from the Cabinet Office's major projects authority, which assesses the value for money of major public spending schemes. It concluded "there can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived", recommending ministers "dismember the programme and reconstitute it under new management and organisation arrangements". Its highly critical verdict said: "The project has not delivered in line with the original intent as targets on dates, functionality, usage and levels of benefit have been delayed and reduced. It is not possible to identify a documented business case for the whole of the programme. Unless the work is refocused, it is hard to see how the perception can ever be shifted from the faults of the past and allowed to progress effectively to support the delivery of effective healthcare." Health minister Simon Burns, who is responsible for the NHS, said recently: "The nationally imposed system is neither necessary nor appropriate to deliver this. We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have and add to their environment either by integrating systems purchased through the existing national contracts or elsewhere." Providers of NHS care such as hospitals and GP surgeries will now be told to strike IT deals locally and regionally to get the best programmes they can afford. It is still unclear how much money the government has agreed to pay contractors in recent negotiations over cancellation fees for scrapping the project. Lansley told the the Daily Mail: "Labour's IT programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers' money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn't fit their needs. "We will be moving to an innovative new system driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money from IT systems that better meet the needs of a modernised NHS." Serious doubts about the project's future were confirmed this year when the cross-party House of Commons public accounts committee said it was "unworkable" and that, despite huge investment, had failed to deliver. NHS told to abandon delayed IT project | Society | The Guardian |