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back to article Total cost of THAT axed NHS IT fiasco to taxpayers: £10.1bn

The shambolic nationwide NHS patient record computer system, abandoned by Whitehall in 2011, will ultimately cost UK taxpayers a staggering £10.1bn. US-headquartered Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), alongside UK telecoms giant BT, failed to fully implement the massive project, sparking widespread derision before the plug …

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      1. Chris G
        Reply Icon

        Re: How many lives

        Tom 11 it sounds as though you have some knowledge of the NHS. Since I read the article this morning I have read a little more and overall when you look at the numbers it doesn't do too bad a job.

        243,000,000 visits to doctors and hospitals a year averages out at about 500 quid a per patient visit, when you consider that many of these visits are actually for surgery or extensive treatment it begins to look compared to many other places somewhat of a bargain.

        An example here in Spain; an acquaintance was involved in an RTA, the ambulance that came to take him to hospital despite the EU reciprocal health agreement and him producing his medical card would not take him to hospital until he coughed up €500 on his credit card.

        Plus 12Bn over 15 years is probably less than one percent of the budget over that period.

        What can be saved out of the exercise if anything?

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      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How many lives

        "...continued wandering about with bits of paper and carrying x-rays beween wards..."

        Sorry, do you know how overpriced LSP PACS solutions were? And how much delay they introduced in getting PACS up and running in every Trust I am aware of? I'm guessing not.

        "...(transfer of) medical records between facilities for those people admitted to A&E when involved in accidents out side of their PCT..."

        OK, so you're talking about SCR here, right? The system with, frequently, inaccurate demographic information and, generally, not much else (Allergies if you're very, very lucky). You're painting it up to be something it isn't. I smell a CSC stooge.

        While commenting on NPfIT I am constantly amused by CfH taking the credit for NHS Mail when that project was already well underway (by the NHSIT) before CfH even existed; what the National Programme did was take something that should have been relatively simple and turn it into such a behemoth that they wound up paying (in the words of one commentator) "... £200 million for a crap version of Hotmail...."

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        1. Tom 11
          Reply Icon
          Facepalm

          Re: How many lives

          Nope, no stooge. I left a long time ago. The project was badly managed with too many fingers in the pie. What I am saying, which you conveniently gloss over, is how this would've helped the NHS and the nation if it was realised as a fully implemented solution of the original vision.

          Did I mention the cost of PACS? yep, I think I already acknowledged the budgeting problems, but the system was good, it worked and saved time.

          SCR was good, the only reason it would have sparse info would have been down to the staff that use it, you can't expect a data base to fill it's self!

          I smell a know-it-all e-insider goon! (over pampered ex-GP per chance?)

          Al you're doing here is backing up my post, if you actually read it properly instead of frothing at the mouth you'll see I refer to all the criticism you level.

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          1. Smoking Gun
            Reply Icon

            Re: How many lives

            PACS was a no-brainer. It would have been a success with or without the national programme. I can tell you now, the NHS paid through the arse for LSP PACS too.

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  2. Rono666
    WTF?

    Just wait

    When the wheels fall off of the Universal Credit system. How many Billions will that take with i?.

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    1. I-R-M
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Just wait

      @Rono666

      What do you mean when...

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/10/universal_credit_will_be_a_universal_failure_says_whistleblower/

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  3. a_mu

    FTTP

    wasnt this amount about the same as the "too expensive" and "waste of money" cost of wiring ( or should that be fibering ? ) the UK with FTTP.

    Know what I'd rather spend on,

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  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    So. *not* going to get banned like IBM in Queensland.

    Pity.

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  5. Ted Treen
    Facepalm

    Plain & Simple

    It's never going to improve until they institute a couple of practices widespread in the private sector:-

    1) If you're in charge then you're responsible.

    2) If it all goes pear-shaped then you're fired.

    Institute those two rules (normal rules, in my working life) and perchance we'll see some projects actually being given rational & coherent thought/planning.

    But it's Whitehall we're talking about so I won't hold my breath...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Plain & Simple

      "It's never going to improve until they institute a couple of practices widespread in the private sector:-

      1) If you're in charge then you're responsible.

      2) If it all goes pear-shaped then you're fired."

      Unfortunately, even that wouldn't work. It's ages since the civil service worked out foolproof ways of diffusing responsibility so that when things go wrong it's no individual's fault. They call it a "systemic failure" - that's the kind from which "lessons have been learned".

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  6. Uli

    Just what I said it would be, ~£10B

    ... when the outfit I was with won a sizable chunk of the original ~£1B contract.

    Mark my words, I said, the cost will be ten times that by the time they scrap / abandon it.

    It always is, with big government contracts.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time for Fundamental Changes by a less toothless Government!

    Just disgusting really! This one was particularly bad because the warning signs were there from about the first year - disgraceful that they didn't close the project sooner. Thing is - while this is probably the worst example, statistically most UK Government IT Projects go this way. http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-saas/british-government-it-projects-running-l/240155773 They need to become more tech savvy and govt programme and project management frameworks need to be improved to be more stringent and enforced consistently across suppliers. The likes of MSP, PRINCE2 and ITIL have taken government funded IT programmes and projects to a new level of hell because they are toothless, vague methodologies implemented and executed differently everywhere. Painful as it sounds - I think the government needs to go an extra mile or two on their methodologies and define the low-level schematic structures and associated functional workflows within their methodologies - and subsequently and continuously audit suppliers to assess 100% compliance. By this I mean, for example, that the fields and their associated value options and usage of a Business Case, a PID, a Stage Plan or a Config Item etc etc should be dictated and verified against each supplier. Seriously - what's the point of having a bunch of methodologies that are 'open to interpretation' on a supplier-to-supplier basis - and then have the balls to ask why projects aren't being delivered consistently and successfully?

    Real problem is that it is generally underpayed, less-educated and less motivated civil servants trying to operate under beaurocratic regulatory regimes having rings run around them by high-tech commercially savvy profit- and bonus-driven private-sector suppliers. We need lean, agile savvy government and public bodies!

    I also think it's about high-time UK Government realised and accepted that IT is here to stay and that development and support will be required pretty-much forever - so maybe they should make a move across all public bodies to increase OPEX budgets and grants to promote longer-term permanent and more loyal staff and therefore not be so dependent on private sector IT suppliers in the first place who are just out to fleece government!

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    1. Shannon Jacobs
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      For-profit medical care is fundamentally risky

      Yours was the only comment that mentioned profits, though rather tangentially. I think that's the root of this problem. The Americans were only concerned about profits, and I'm even willing to wager that they lied about their capabilities to land the contract in hopes of getting those big profits. The British healthcare system is not focused on profits, but on health and controlled costs. Almost inevitable that the crossed signals would bollix things up.

      How much profit did the Americans manage to pocket amidst this snafu? All we can hope is that it wasn't too outrageous? Oh, wait. I'm already outraged.

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  8. Infernoz Bronze badge
    FAIL

    Big Centralist stuff concentrates and amplifies risk; it is fragile, it is fail bait.

    Everyone with any brains should read the book Anti-Fragile by Nicholas Taleb, so that they know why centralisation of risk is not just idiotic, but mental cripple territory, where Black Swans breed.

    Life has to have lots of small trial and error failures, including in embryos, to get the really big wins, a mechanism we call Evolution, so the population doesn't just survive, but thrives dependent on how best suited they are to an environment, and the dead end failures die; this is what you need to be Anti-Fragile!

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    1. Scorchio!!
      Reply Icon

      Re: Big Centralist stuff concentrates and amplifies risk; it is fragile, it is fail bait.

      "Everyone with any brains should read the book Anti-Fragile by Nicholas Taleb, so that they know why centralisation of risk is not just idiotic, but mental cripple territory, where Black Swans breed."

      As a philosophy graduate I'd like to point out that, in order to find black swans and their breeding grounds, you need only go to New Zealand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan

      I'm not as sure about white crows as I was before today, because my searches gave patchy (no pun intended, though it is apposite) returns. Such as: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrows.htm

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wasn't one of the original excuses for this system...

    Was to save the lives of dozen-or-so people who die each year where lost or incorrect patient records played a part in their deaths?

    At least after spending £10 billion these people have now been saved, no?

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  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    And who will have won when the contractors have gone?

    Title says it all.

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