Staff defend Royal Free Hospital NHS IT systems

Disastrous go-live offset by more efficient and secure systems, says member of staff

Staff at the Royal Free have defended new IT systems

A member of staff at the Royal Free Hospital in London has written to The Guardian to defend the £12.7bn NHS National Programme for IT project that has been trialled at the Hampstead-based trust.

The go-live last summer for the Cerner electronic care records software went ahead before the hospital systems were ready and meant outpatients' bookings were taking four times as long – costing the hospital some £10m.

But Alex Homersham, a member of the administrative staff at the Royal Free at the time, writes that the eventual improvements have been "immeasurable".

"I have now started working for another trust that has yet to start using the new IT system. The amount of extra faxes, phone calls and paperwork is time-consuming and unnecessary," he writes.

Homersham said the old system was insecure and time-intensive, and clinical staff had no personal access to it. Patient care was held up while clinicians waited for records to be transferred.

The new Cerner patient software system used in the Royal Free is also more secure than the old system.

"Regarding the issue of security, Cerner is only accessible via a smartcard, which is password-protected, and can be deactivated," Homersham's letter says.

Earlier this year NHS chief information officer Christine Connelly gave NHS IT suppliers until November to deliver significant improvements or face contract reviews.

At the current rate of progress, the National Programme will not be complete until 2015 – some four years behind schedule, though the scheme has not run over budget due to rigorous payment-on-delivery contract terms.

Recent reports have suggested that the Conservatives favour the storing of care records online with Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault.