DoH declares NPfIT is to be managed locally

With national applications to be managed as IT services rather than ongoing implementations

The NPfIT will be scrapped in favour of more local control

A Department of Health (DoH) review of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has concluded that the centralised, top-down approach should be scrapped in favour of a more locally led system of procurement.

National applications which have already been procured, such as Choose and Book, the Electronic Prescription Service and PACS, will be managed as standard IT services rather than ongoing implementations.

Health minister Simon Burns said: "Improving IT is essential to delivering a patient-centred NHS. But the nationally imposed system is neither necessary nor appropriate to deliver this. We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have and add to their environment either by integrating systems purchased through the existing national contracts or elsewhere."

Burns went on to claim that moving IT systems closer to the front line will release £700m extra in savings.

Director general for informatics Christine Connelly said: "It is clear that the National Programme for IT has delivered important changes for the NHS, including an infrastructure which the NHS today depends on for providing safe and responsive healthcare. Now the NHS is changing, we need to change the way IT supports those changes, bringing decisions closer to the front line and ensuring that change is manageable and holds less risk for NHS organisations."

A spokesperson from 2020 Health, an independent think-tank on health and technology, said that they welcome the announcement, but warned that the government risks fragmenting NHS IT.

"Without properly joined-up IT, the government will not be able to achieve the White Paper's vision for 'a better NHS that...is less insular and fragmented, and works much better across boundaries'. Is the government fully committed and supportive of the need for 'joined-up IT', how will this now be enabled, and under what governance model?"

Gayna Hart, managing director of software provider Quicksilva, commented that the move to local control will free Trusts to scrap those parts of NPfIT which are seen to be failing.

“One of the major parts of the NPfIT programme yet to be delivered successfully is the new Patient Administration System (PAS)," she said. "This one particular cornerstone of the NPfIT has made little impact and has not yet delivered on its intentions. Furthermore, it is currently costing a great deal of public money."

Hart continued to state that Trusts will be unlikely to continue to invest time and money in PAS now that they will have control of their own funding.

"Instead, they may now make their own IT spending decisions and by bringing that responsibility to a local level it will ensure that hospitals, doctors and patients get what they are asking for. Without government backing, the programme will become a choice, and this will give trusts the power they need to allocate their own budget to areas where it matters to them," she concluded.