Damage control
The world at large got a glimpse of the damage control ongoing after Andrew Rollerson’s description of the CfH programme as
in danger of delivering “a camel, and not the racehorse that we might try to produceâ€, as he told a parliamentary committee that this can only be solved with more ‘visionary and proactive leadership from the NHS.’
Good luck with that search, there is more chance of me winning the lottery.
I expect the minutes of the session to turn up here but for the moment, let’s go with the report.
Andrew Rollerson, who was credited as ‘formerly practice lead of the healthcare consultancy at Fujitsu’ , told the Commons Public Accounts Committee that he had faith in NPfIT but felt some issues needed correcting first.
He has since been suspended from his duties by the company, pending an internal inquiry which could lead to disciplinary procedures.
Yup, shoot the messenger for the message.
He revealed to the committee that Fujitsu, local service provider for the Southern cluster, had found NPfIT a difficult project to manage.
“If NPfIT was left to IT departments to control, it would fail because the end users would not be engaged. If we’re not careful the driver will become the technology itself.â€
An understatement if ever there was one. The dialogue with the users in the NHS needed to happen before the system requirements were set out & contracts signed. Anything else had no chance whatsoever as too many compromises would have to be made. Watch out for similar problems from the ISTC programme, especially the data integration between the new private sector facilities & the CfH solutions, both of which do not propose to deliver the actual requirements of clinicians on the ground.
Rollerson spent all of his time away from the hearing surrounded by senior colleagues from Fujitsu. He told the committee that he felt reporting in Computer Weekly was out of context from what he thought was a presentation intended to be supportive of the national programme.
Using another analogy, he said that it was like designers at Boeing who were considering replacing the 747 with a jumbo jet, before realising that a new design would be a much better and effective design for everyone involved – CfH should look at NPfIT in the same sort of light as this.
So are we going to get a proper review of the programme? One that involves stopping the waste of money that the current one is?
I’m not holding my breath.
Video of that committee.