Department of Health wastes millions on ineffective web sites

The DoH has promised an 'information revolution'

A leaked report from the Department of Health (DoH) has revealed that the NHS maintains thousands of web sites that are difficult to find, badly designed and irrelevant to patient needs, at a cost of £86m per year, according to The Guardian.

This annual maintenance figure does not include start-up costs, so the real expenditure is likely to be even higher.

Although the DoH recently cancelled its centralised Microsoft licensing deal as part of a cost-cutting exercise, the leak shows that the government still has a long way to go to cut out unnecessary expenditure in its IT.

The DoH's leaked digital communications review identified 4,121 NHS web sites of which 1,000 were no longer accessible. Almost a third of the web sites had " at least one notable deficit in standards" with confusing navigation or poor content.

Only half the web sites provided email addresses, from which the report concluded that "vulnerable members of the public are often not being properly catered for".

The review is based on the findings of a research paper showing that patients "struggled to locate the NHS online with a google search" and even when they did "the scale and depth of information on offer was daunting to many".

A DoH spokesman said: "We know that information is the key to patient choice and control as well as better outcomes for patients. The government intends to bring about an NHS information revolution to give people access to comprehensive, trustworthy and easy to understand information from a range of sources on conditions, treatments, lifestyle choices and how to look after their own and their family’s health."

An "information strategy" will be launched in the autumn, in line with the stated intentions of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's recent White Paper.