Officials said a prudent estimate from data from a fifth of NHS trusts showed it was on course to save £1.14bn. They said the figures were positive but acknowledged it could have been more.

The Tories said the savings were peanuts compared to the scale of the project – it is the biggest civilian IT scheme in the world.

Central parts of the 10-year programme – aimed at linking more than 30,000 GPs to nearly 300 hospitals by 2014 – have been running up to two years behind schedule.

Electronic medical records and “choose and book” – an online appointments system for GPs – have been the worst-hit.

Despite the problems, labour said £208m had been saved by March 2007, mainly because of the broadband network installed across the NHS and the progress made with the digital imaging and scanning.

And it predicted that by the end, the savings would top £1bn.

The figures were revealed in the government’s benefits statement for the National Programme for IT.

Ministers were told to publish the accounts by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee in a report last year criticising the progress being made.

The document shows that the project has under-spent by over 40% so far.

This indicates the scale of the delays as suppliers are only paid when they deliver, although officials warned this could not be interpreted as exactly over 40% of project falling behind schedule.

Richard Jeavons, a senior IT official at the Department of Health, said: “We can be positive about the evidence emerging. Of course, if we had not had delays we would be further ahead.”

But shadow health minister Stephen O’Brien criticised the fact only £208m had been saved so far, calling it “peanuts” compared to the cost of the programme.

“It is certainly nothing the government should be crowing about as it is the very least they should be doing to recover their incompetence on a grand scale.”

From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7295116.stm

Health Direct points out that labour’s meddling, incompetence is beginning to come home to roost.

On March 20, 2006 Health Direct posted: NPfIT NHS plan is evolving but one-size-fits-all is a fundamental flaw, says hospital chief when Sir Jonathan Michael, a top NHS executive, who spoke at a healthcare symposium at London’s City University pointed to a fundamental flaw in the NHS’s IT-driven modernisation.

The flaw Michael sees in the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is its centralised, standardised approach at a time when the health service is decentralising. The chief executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Michael wants IT support for the specific ways people work in particular parts of his organisation, such as the accident and emergency department.

“The idea that the requirements for all hospitals are the same is, I think, simplistic. Flexibility is designed out of solutions and out of the implementation process. So standardisation of IT systems effectively dictates the standardisation of the business model,” he said.

Michael’s speech about the NPfIT commanded the rapt attention of his audience not simply because he is running one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK but because it is rare for any senior health service executive, especially one of Michael’s standing, to criticise openly the NPfIT.

Caring for some cancer patients, for example, requires joint decisions being made increasingly in multi-disciplinary teams. Video conferencing is key to that, said Michael, but the original plans for the NPfIT did not set aside money for video conferencing.