After a damning report from the U.K.’s national audit office indicating that the National Health Service’s massive health IT program has essentially been a black hole which vacuums up far more money than its lack of progress would justify, politicians are now calling for what amounts to the program’s termination.
Physicians support a national system of health records, but there seems to be a consensus that, in the current climate of British austerity, it may be time to amputate the program to stop the bleeding. After all, the audit indicated that despite a seven-year extension, it looks like the program has no chance of meeting its 2014-15 deadlines, or even of producing meaningful results. Here’s Polly Curtis in The Guardian.
The original aim of the £11.4bn NHS IT programme – to install a patient record database accessible from any point in the NHS in England by 2015 – will fail, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned.
The £2.7bn spent so far on the system has not been value for money, the watchdog said, adding it had no confidence that the remaining £4.3bn would be any better spent.
The nine-year-old project – the biggest civilian IT scheme attempted – has been in disarray since it missed its first deadlines in 2007. While its ambitions have been downgraded in recent years, the bill from the suppliers has remained largely unchanged, the report said.
