Jeremy Hunt claims £240m NHS technology fund hasn't been cut

Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund will have a 'staged rollout', says Secretary of State

Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt has claimed that a £240m technology fund for the NHS has not been cut, but will merely be subjected to a "staged rollout".

Hunt was answering questions at the UK e-Health Week conference in London today, and was questioned on the technology fund after NHS England had revealed last month that only £43m of the initial £240m of the fund would be allocated to the 48 applicants who had been successful in applying for funding.

Applicants were a mix of NHS organisations and local authorities, and the lack of funding may have a severe impact on their IT projects.

But despite NHS England's admission that the funding would be cut, Hunt claimed that the NHS had merely "staged the rollout rather than completely cut it".

He said that as the NHS had to find an additional £2bn by next year for frontline services, it had to make "difficult decisions in other parts of the organisation".

But he insisted that IT and technology remained vital component of the NHS.

"My view is that it's really important to invest in IT and there is nothing more important [than IT]," he said.

The fund, dubbed the Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund, formed part of a wider project at the NHS to enable information to easily be shared across care settings.

When the fund was first announced, NHS England said that the £240m would be split across three years, with two-thirds of the money (£160m) being available in 2014/15 and the final third (£80m) being available in 2015/16. Now the split will be of £20m and £23m respectively.

At the event, Hunt also claimed that his promise that the NHS would go paperless by 2018 was "the maddest promise" he had ever made.