New events in 2005

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The Observer 13 February 2005

Page 12

Management

A £6bn question for the NHS

The world's biggest non-military IT operation is making companies think and operate in completely new ways, writes Simon Caulkin.

Is the National Programme for IT in the National Health Service, the largest civil IT initiative in the world, a bold and innovative move that will push both the NHS and the British IT industry to the forefront of healthcare technology and practice? Or is it just a disaster in the making?

This £6 billion question - the price tag on the 10-year NPFIT programme - is so far hard to answer.

... the National Audit Office's recent finding that by December last year only 63 hospital appointments had been booked electronically instead of the anticipated 205,000, plus a decidedly downbeat opinion survey of doctors last week, seem to confirm the worst.

... "This is a big, big project", points our (Marcus) Bolton, an entrepreneur with a record of plain speaking about NHS IT. "It's an extraordinary challenge. Very few people have worked on anything this size. It's evolving as we go along, but we're genuinely making enormous progress."

... Digitization of the NHS's antiquated and unjoined-up systems has to come, he (Marcus Bolton) reasons. "It's essential for better patient care and helping staff to do their jobs as effectively as possible."

... Is he more confident about the outcome than a year ago? "Yes," he says, without hesitation. Some over-ambitious targets dates may be missed, and not every contract will deliver at the same speed. But that does not mean the project is a failure. On the contrary, "With the infrastructure going in, we think people will see things in action soon. Yes, it will work - we're going to make it work".