Software suppliers may seek compensation as IT chief Grainger leaves

The NHS could face pressure from its big three IT suppliers- BT, CSC and Fujitsu- to change the £6bn contracts they have signed, following Richard Granger's departure from the helm of the world's biggest civil IT project.

Four years after the original contracts were signed, the £20bn programme, to provide an electronic patient record and much else, is changing - although it is not yet entirely clear how.

Strategic health authorities are being given direct responsibility for improving implementation. A tender is being completed to bring on additional software and service suppliers.

And while key parts of the infrastructure are now in place, big questions remain about when new patient administration systems will go in to hospitals, along with the associated software needed to provide a shared, electronic patient record.

Fears about the future of iSoft, one of the two key software providers for the record, were markedly eased yesterday, as CSC, its parent contractor, took more responsibility for the software itself.

But hospitals are reluctant to take new administration systems until iSoft's patient record software is available - the earliest installations are not due until next year - and until Cerner, the other record provider, has an accounts package adapted to the NHS.

It looks likely to be 2009 or 2010 before those will be being installed in large numbers nationwide. And some NHS trusts are seeking more variation than is so far theoretically permitted under the fierce standardisation that the programme has sought to date. That would vary existing contracts, as would bringing in more suppliers.

There remains room for fierce debate about where the blame lies for the delays - with the NHS or the suppliers. Mr Granger has paid suppliers only for systems that are working, keeping the programme on budget.

But six months ago, he warned publicly that his departure might lead to claims from key suppliers that their original contracts have been varied and they should be compensated. At the weekend, he described that risk as "significant". And that appears to be one reason why he and ministers are talking about a "transition" from his full-time role, rather than an immediate departure.

There is also the question of who - given the size of the brickbats that have come to be associated with the job - will want to replace him.

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5e7e23f8-1e01-11dc-89f7-000b5df10621.html

There is also a question as to why Richard Grainger is leaving his post. Health Direct points out that successful IT projects need a champion to drive the strategic implementation through. With his departure that leadership is now lacking. And patients are having to wait even longer.

On Mon 5 Jun 06 Health Direct posted: £20bn NpfIT computer failures left NHS patients waiting longer as evidence that the Labour government’s troubled £20 billion National Health Service computer system has lengthened waiting times for patients has emerged for the first time.

It was hoped that a pilot scheme for the technology at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust in Oxford would show the benefits of the delayed system. Instead, when it went “live”, the computers crashed, data could not be found and some patients found that they were facing among the longest waits for operations in the country.

Staff who were instructed to sort out the problem could not even establish from the malfunctioning computers which patients had been waiting the longest and the numbers kept climbing.

Ross Anderson, a professor in security engineering at the University of Cambridge, warned that the new system was likely to cause “chaos and disaster” in the NHS. “They’re ripping out the old systems but they’re not replacing them with anything better,” he said.