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17
Nov 2020
MPs say NHS England’s IT plan expensive and risky
The Commons Public Accounts Committee have said that the NHS is in danger of repeating mistakes made in the past as it tries to modernise its IT systems, warning that substantial sums of public money could be wasted.
Their report adds that without proper planning, it will be unclear whether the health service’s digital transformation plan will deliver value for money.
In 2014, the Department of Health unveiled a digital strategy with the ultimate target of achieving a paperless NHS four years later. According to the report, that target was not reached and was instead watered down and moved back six years.
The committee detail a history of failure over nearly twenty years, including the largely unsuccessful programme to create an integrated system across the health service in England with electronic patient records. The report warns that as of today, none of the components needed to deliver the ambitions is in place.
Committee chair Meg Hillier, says lessons of the past have not been learned, adding “Instead the government presses on with expensive and unproven strategies and contracts that cost the taxpayer millions but don’t deliver.”
One repeated issue has been the wide variety of IT systems used within different parts of the health service, many of which are unable to operate with each other, meaning for example that it is often difficult for hospitals to share medical images and scans with GPs.
The report says it is imperative that systems should be interoperable if the NHS digital version is to be delivered.
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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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