What is striking to you and what can you extract from the above in terms of concerning, surprising, interesting and maybe even obvious?

Question

Hospital boss hits out at IT system

A NHS hospital boss has criticised the new computerised medical records system, saying it cost his

trust an extra £10 million and meant fewer patients could be seen.

Andrew Way, chief executive of Hampstead's Royal Free Hospital, in north west London, said staff

were "incredibly disappointed" with the IT upgrade on trial at the hospital.

The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) aims to create a centralised medical records system for 50

million patients in England at a cost of more than £12 billion.

The Government believes this will benefit patient care and could prove vital in an emergency. The

Royal Free began trialing the e-records system last summer.

Mr Way told the BBC: "I think it is very disappointing that the work we had to do as a trust has caused

our staff so much heartache and hard work. Many of the medical staff are incredibly disappointed with

what we have got.

"I have personally apologised for the decision to implement the system before we were really clear

about what we were going to receive. I had been led to believe it would all work."

He said the hospital spent an extra £4 million to get the system working, with added administration

costs including 40 extra staff to handle the added workload.

And he said a further £6 million was effectively lost because fewer patients and problems with the

system meant the hospital was unable to bill other parts of the NHS for work done.

He also said the Royal Free had been unable to invest in new equipment and out-patient bookings

were taking four times as long.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Many elements of the programme are complete, and

patients and clinicians are now beginning to see the benefits these systems bring to improve patient

care. We are learning lessons from the deployment at the Royal Free of Cerner Millennium (the new

computer system), which now has an effective patient record system, and we expect these lessons to

help us improve further deployments."

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Question:

What is striking to you and what can you extract from the above in terms of concerning,

surprising, interesting and maybe even obvious?

Answer 1

As a computer engineer, I would say the most striking thing that's come out of this is that the considerations of the end-users was not a consideration when implementing this system. I understand the end-goal being one of value - having a centralized data source for medical records - but the execution of that plan seems to been done poorly. Does the new system have the bandwidth to have all of these clinics and hospitals connected to it at the same time? probably not. Is there any data conversion that needs to take place? Oh yes, and that is a nightmare all on its own.

Loft goal, poor execution.