Issue date: 13 August 1998
Article source: Computer Weekly News
MPs say NHS Executive must learn from IT strategy errors
The NHS Executive faces a major challenge to build confidence in its
ability to provide overall management of IT developments across the
NHS, says an all-party select committee of MPs.
The trenchant criticism of the Executive, headed by Alan Langlands,
came in a report of the Public Accounts Committee into the Read
Codes, a œ32m system of classifying patient ailments.
The committee's MPs, who had been briefed by Computer Weekly on the
similarities between the problems on Read Codes and the failings at
Wessex Regional Health Authority, urged the Executive to ensure
lessons from its failures are taken on board in the new NHS IT
strategy.
The strategy was due to be published in March but is now due in a few
weeks' time, once media coverage of the MPs' criticism of the Read
Codes project has died down.
Frank Burns, author of the strategy, will quit running IT in the NHS
before the strategy is published. Ann Harding, who has run the Read
Codes project, will replace him.
In last week's report one criticism of the Executive was it "failed to
exercise effective oversight and control over the conduct of financial
and management matters" relating to
Read codes.
The committee said independent evaluations should be a core requirement
of any big IT development project.
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Ahmad
________________________________________
Dr Ahmad Risk
http://mednetics.org
home: +44 1273 748198
work: +44 1737 240022
fax: +44 1737 244660
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