Abandoned NHS IT project costs taxpayers £10bn - and there
may be more to come
Incidently, CSC was a principle contractor in Iraq following
the last Iraq war, they are more famous for their division that provided
services for extraordinary rendition as well as everything else. They’ve made
some disposals since then.
My view is that this was a relatively simple system to
create.
All you needed to do was have an IT committee who would lay
down mandatory guidelines for every hospital and G.P’s surgery – you all have
to have the same computers and systems, preferably bought centrally as much as
possible to keep costs down.
You then create a system, not unlike the current one for
moving paper files around – for requests for files to be sent over the internet and for files to be copied electronically and sent down the line.
That would involve delays but also give us safeguards. Essentially it would be the current system converted to an electronic version. Slow but quicker and cheaper.
After a
number of years of successful operation, you then move up a stage to open up secure access
to files across the NHS.
Cost? Very little extra to the current system.
Gains? A working system that grew up organically.
The alternative? Read this and weep;
By Peter Gothard 18
Sep 2013
A grand NHS
patient record system that was intended to computerise every patient record -
before being abandoned - has cost UK taxpayers £10bn so far.
Furthermore,
hundreds of millions of pounds more in costs are expected to emerge from the
rubble of the project, according to a report from a government public spending
watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Launched in
2002, the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) project was plagued from the start
by constantly shifting specifications, technical hurdles and disputes with
suppliers.
As the
project fell behind schedule, the rate of technological advancement outside the
project also affected progress.
By
September 2011, ministers said the project would be cancelled, but that parts would
be salvaged and used, with separate management and accountability structures.
The new
report has examined these spin-off projects, and discovered what it calls even
more "extraordinary" failures in the government's decision to renegotiate
an original £3.1bn contract with IT systems provider Computer Science
Corporation (CSC), which have undermined all the spin-off projects.
The report
explains how the Department of Health initially failed to meet contractual
obligations, which made the government less able to negotiate.
The main
project based on the £3.1bn contract is the Lorenzo system, which was meant to
store and manage data for 220 health trusts in the north, east and Midlands.
However, 10 years down the line, says the report, "not a single trust has
a fully functioning Lorenzo care records system".
It is
suggested that the final bill for Lorenzo will cost the Department for Health
another £2.2bn on top of the £10bn written off - but cover only 22 trusts instead
of 220.
Conservative
MP and member of the PAC Richard Bacon called the project and its expensive
failures one of the "most protracted and worst contracting scandals in the
history of the public sector... both in the scale of money involved and the scale
of mistakes".
Robbie
Hughes, CEO of practice management software firm Qinec, said: "We need proper
industry engagement and open standards to allow the market to create its own
solutions that last and evolve with changing needs.
"With
the proper incentives, this won't be a challenge, but while prescriptive requirements
are being issued centrally and suppliers continue to be encouraged to build
bespoke to these, the bills will simply keep going up and up and the systems
will be out of date as soon as they are launched."
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutthenhs.blogspot.com
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