Phil Sissions, who recently left the UK's NHS' National Program for Information Technology (NPfIT), was on hand at the 22nd annual Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) conference. He gave a pretty critical account of the progress to date for the single largest program in healthcare IT. The only real successes were getting broadband into the various hospitals and practices and getting some PACS systems up. Getting doctors their own email address was somewhat mockingly called the biggest achievement. Sissions said that many of the other programs, including the Choose and Book appointment system are barely being used and that GPs revolted when they were told that they, had to change out their practice management systems.
So far the project has spent hardly any of the money allocated to it (about £650M each year) because most of the contracted software hasn't been delivered. Meanwhile, local hospitals and physician authorities have little money for process change and have stopped much IT development progress waiting for the central program to provide for them. Sissions didn't give the attendees much cause for optimism and indicated that there was a heightening level of hostility between the vendors and NPfIT head Richard Granger.
- see this article from the Medical Records Institute