25th February, 2008

Computer Weekly has published papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that show the Department of Health (DOH) drastically underestimated the time it would take to make electronic patient records available online. This followed pressure from Tony Blair to shorten the timetable for the NHS IT programme to ensure demonstrable results for patients in time for a general election in 2005.

The DOH promised systems would provide "seamless" care across the NHS by 2004/05 This has proved hopelessly optimistic. Access by patients and doctors to national summary care records are even now only at a trial stage. And contracts for the delivery and implementation of new national systems run until 2013 - eight years later than the timetable then issued by the DOH.

These papers raise real questions about whether the timetable was geared towards a general election, rather than the practicalities and complexities of the scheme, and whether the DOH put politics before realities in promising the programme in less than three years.

Paul Cundy, GP IT spokesman for the British Medical Association, said it appeared that the DOH had been "wildly, even delusionally, optimistic about the timetable for the NPfIT in order to secure funding".

So it appears that political pressure from Tony Blair in a 45 minute meeting in February 2002 may have resulted in a £12 Billion IT commitment that has so far spectacularly failed to achieve its objectives. It is disgraceful, but after 11 years of New-Labour spin are we really surprised?