Man in a Shed: The Blessed Patricia Hewitt and NHS IT

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The Blessed Patricia Hewitt and NHS IT

Wat Tyler (Burning our money) has a good post on why Computer Weekly is the magazine to watch if you want to find out what the state of government IT projects really is. (I've also been happy to recommend this magazine in former posts for the same reason - really its readable by humans - just not ones who don't want to find out how the government is wasting their money. )

But I recalled listening to the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt telling the ~~us suckers~~ voters about how wonderful the new IT system is and how it allows X-rays and the like to be passed around ( Today prog R4 this morning I think - I wasn't totally awake due to kids failure to sleep though the night ).

Compare it to this bit from CW quoted by Burning our money:

PS Today also brings- again via CW- the latest news of problems with the NHS Supercomputer: "HOSPITAL operations and consultations are being delayed across England because the new NHS computer system suffers almost one 'major incident'” failure every day. Patients have been left waiting on operating tables and others have had appointments cancelled. More than 110 major incidents have been reported by hospitals and GPs over the past four months, Computer Weekly magazine reports today. Reported problems include failures of the system used by surgeons to see X-ray pictures on a computer screen in wards and operating theatres. On some occasions the system has crashed during an operation, forcing the surgeon to suspend the procedure while a hard copy of the X-ray is found."

Believe me this sort of thing is going on now.

You don't even want to know whats happening to one of the major technical suppliers for the NHS IT fiasco ( iSoft ).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Great minds again, I agree it is absolutely disgraceful, I really have no idea how these problems could have been allowed to happen:

http://elleeseymour.com/2006/08/31/government-warned-of-descent-into-chaos-over-revamped-of-nhs-computer/; 3:33 pm

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