A few billion between friends?
After a week of headlines about implementation costs for the NHS IT modernisation programme E-Health Insider takes a rain check on understanding of this key issue.
Feature
NHS close to signing new Microsoft deal
The NHS is on the brink of signing a new three-year corporate licensing agreement with Microsoft to provide desktop applications for the entire NHS. A National Programme for IT (NPfIT) spokesperson told E-Health Insider: "The National Programme for IT can confirm it has reached an agreement with Microsoft for the provision of desk-top licences, which […]
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NAO to investigate National Programme for IT
In an unusual move the £6.2 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is to be investigated by the National Audit Office (NAO), Parliament’s independent public spending watchdog, just two years after the programme was launched. With the major contracts now let and implementation work said to be beginning, the agency will undertake what it describes […]
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Sun awarded ‘tactical’ NHS desktop contract
The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has concluded an evaluation project with Sun Microsystems over the potential use of Sun’s open-source Java Desktop System within the NHS as an alternative to Microsoft. E-Health Insider can exclusively reveal that NPfIT “has concluded that the Java Desktop System, which runs on the Linux operating system, represents a […]
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Six new companies brought under NPfIT banner
The National Programme for IT have announced six new “enterprise-wide" agreements between suppliers of software and hardware infrastructure and services, saving an estimated £30m on market price figures for the project and the NHS in general. Cisco, EMC Computer Systems, Hewlett Packard, SeeBeyond and Sun will supply a number of backup, infrastructure and migration services […]
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Treasury plans £6.8bn NHS savings through IT
Today’s Gershon report, “Releasing resources to the front line: Independent Review of Public Sector Efficiency", has said that IT reform is critical to the NHS achieving its target of saving of £6.8bn by 2008. The report was published on the same day that Chancellor Gordon Brown announced the Treasury’s 2004 spending review in Parliament, which […]
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Radical Steps highlights serious concerns about NPfIT
The National Programme for IT is still failing to communicate what it will deliver, when it will deliver, and what the cost to local NHS organisations will be. In addition, few staff fully understand what the claimed clinical or business benefits of new systems procured will be, and clinical consultation on systems specifications remains limited. […]
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Hextall says details on PACS and legacy imminent
The chief operating officer for the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has promised that details of the national programme’s approach to both legacy systems and the procurement of picture archiving and storage systems (PACS) will be published in the next few weeks. In an exclusive interview with E-Health Insider Gordon Hextall, chief operating officer for […]
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Big Brother alive and well at Heathcare Computing
E-Health Insider comment from Jon Hoeksma “I just had a call from the National Programme [for IT] on what I could say. I looked at my notes and realised I couldn’t say anything.” This was the quote from the Healthcare Computing 2004 conference that perhaps best summed up the national programme’s very strange approach to […]
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Granger promises to make PACS ‘deployable’
A promise to deliver at least 50% cuts in the pricing of Picture Archiving and Storage Systems (PACS) and make it a “deployable technology” came from NHS IT Director General Richard Granger in his address to Healthcare Computing 2004. Local Service Providers (LSPs) are due to submit their latest proposals on how they would deliver Picture […]
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