On August 6, The Observer reported that it had seen documents allegedly sent from the computer of David Kwo, the former Connecting for Health chief in London.
The papers said, the NHS would most likely have been better off without the national program, in terms of what is likely to be delivered and when. The national program has not advanced the NHS IT implementation trajectory at all; in fact, it has put it back from where it was going.
This news follows the biggest IT failure in the National Health Service’s (NHS) history, in which computer systems crashed at 80 hospitals across the West Midlands and North-West of England.
Mr Kwo’s report claimed that hospitals were being forced into implementing old software and legacy systems that the program was established to replace, to show that something was being delivered.
In response to the leaked document, Richard Bacon, MP for South Norfolk, called for the NHS program to be terminated. The billion pounds spent already could have been used to run 10 general district hospitals for a year, he told The Observer. Now it is clear that patient safety and public health could be at risk. It is time to halt this program before things get worse.
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