Information Research Weblog

The UK has a long tradition of disasters in the area of government implementations of information technology, costing, to date, several hundred million pounds. The latest grand plan is that for the National Health Service. You only have to describe the NHS to start giggling at the idea that a centrally designed 'one size fits all' system is actually going to work. In 2001, expenditure on the NHS accounted for a hefty 5.96 of the UK's GDP (approximately £60,000,000 - equal to, in other words, the total GDP of quite a number of small countries!) It employs approximately 1.3 milion people in hundreds of GP practices, hospitals and specialised units. And is busy designing a single NHS IT infrastructure for this lot.

No one gives very good odds on a successful implementation.

Guardian Online this week carries an article about a hospital that the NHS can only dream about. Significantly, the hospital is a stand-alone operation so it has been able to implement systems that fit its needs. The NHS, of course, wouldn't want that to happen. It wants the seamless transfer of information throughout the system - ignoring the fact that as long as the data can be interpreted, systems do not need to be fully integrated. I don't offer any odds myself on much learning from previous experience takeing place.