CfH says it has ‘no objection’ to a review

Connecting for Health has agreed with its academic critics that "a constructive and pragmatic" independent review of the National Programme for IT could be valuable, according to a statement issued today.

A CfH official meanwhile told EHI that the the meeting "was extremely cordial", and said that "CfH had no objection to an independent taking place".

The statement issed today follows on from a meeting held yesterday between Connecting for Health’s chief executive, Richard Granger, and six representatives from the 23 UK-based academics who wrote an open letter calling for an independent technical review of the national programme.

Describing the meeting as a "constructive and fruitful dialogue", the CfH statement continued: "The representatives expressed their agreement with and support for the overall goals of the programme in the meeting. There was agreement that a constructive and pragmatic independent review of the programme could be valuable. The parties agreed to meet again to consider further details of how such a review might best be conducted and its terms of reference."

The academics had said in their letter, addressed to the House of Commons health select committee: "Concrete, objective information about NPfIT’s [National Programme for IT] progress is not available to external observers. Reliable sources within NPfIT have raised concerns about the technology itself.

"The National Audit Office report about NPfIT is delayed until this summer, at the earliest; the report is not expected to address major technical issues. As computer scientists, engineers and informaticians, we question the wisdom of continuing NPfIT without an independent assessment of its basic technical viability."

As the academics acknowledged, the national programme is already under scrutiny by the National Audit Office and, in addition, Richard Jeavons, CFH’s director of service implementation has said a "refresh" of the programme is underway, though this would appear to be a review of the programme’s alignment with central policy for the NHS.