NHS IT: Plus ça change...?

Watching the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing on the programme formerly known as NPfIT (the National Programme for IT in the NHS) last week, you could be forgiven for thinking you were having a ‘Ground Hog Day-style’ experience (see ‘Nicholson put through the wringer over NPfIT’).

In many respects, the NPfIT soap opera has moved on very little since the last PAC report into the Programme was published in August 2011 (see ‘NHS IT: PAC report piles pressure on CSC (and BT)). The key contracts are still ongoing despite the Coalition Government’s plans to ‘scrap’ NPfIT, which were announced with such political fanfare in September 2011 (see ‘NPfT: What does ‘accelerated dismantling’ really mean?’). The Department of Health is still in contract negotiations with CSC, the prime contractor tasked with providing electronic patient record (EPR) systems in the North, Midlands and East of England. CSC still hasn’t delivered its Lorenzo EPR system at scale with the functionality originally promised by the end of 2005. And the NHS is still locked in a legal dispute with former NPfIT supplier Fujitsu over the £896m contract terminated in 2008. It is little wonder that Public Accounts Committee members let their frustration show.

In other respects, however, things have changed in the NHS IT market in the two years since the last PAC report into the controversial programme. In our latest PublicSectorViews research note - NHS IT: Plus ça change...? - we take the opportunity to highlight some of the key facts to come out of the latest PAC hearing; debate whether or not the NHS IT market has moved on and consider the implications for suppliers.

PublicSectorViews subscribers can download this research from today. If you don't yet subscribe to our public sector research stream and you'd like to know more please email Deborah Seth for details.

Posted by Tola Sargeant at '14:06' - Tagged: publicsector   health   research