NHS 23

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk>
Date: October 18, 2006 3:43:38 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: NHS 23

Hi Dave:

I alerted you to the wiki that I and others have set up concerning  
the UK National Health Service's "National Programme for IT" merely  
by adding you to the cc list of a message sent to a number of  
colleagues. Thus I omitted to make it clear that I thought you might  
well find it appropriate to draw the IP list's attention to this  
wiki, given that it concerns the problems of what is claimed to be  
"the world's biggest civil IT procurement ever!", intended to connect  
"over 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals and give patients  
access to their personal health and care information, transforming  
the way the NHS works".

By way of a taster let me quote what has appeared on the (London)  
Times' web-site about our wiki:

Compute this (12 Oct 2006)

Daniel Finkelstein's Rolling Guide to the Best Opinion on the Web,  
Times Online

http://www.timesonline.typepad.com/comment/

"NHS 23 is a fascinating and horrifying site. It provides an account  
of the repeated warnings given to Parliament by 23 of the UK's most  
respected IT academics about the multi-billion pound NHS computer  
project. They basically warned from the beginning that a fiasco  
loomed. Take this: "As experts in complex systems, we are concerned  
that the NHS National Program for IT (NPfIT) is starting to show many  
of the symptoms displayed by large IT and business change projects  
that have failed in the past. We have a wide range of IT backgrounds  
and experience, and have studied many failed projects, as well as  
many that succeeded. Our professional opinion is that a constructive,  
independent review is urgently needed." It was written to the  
Commons' Health Committee in May 2004. Last week, they had to send  
the same letter again. Anyway, you can pretty much stop anywhere on  
the site and read about an unfolding multi-billion pound scandal."

The wiki is at: http://nhs-it.info

Cheers

Brian


--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/



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