Department of Health wants £5.6bn in funding to deliver IT plans

DoH submitted bid to government in September ahead of spending review at the end of the month

The Department of Health (DoH) has claimed that it needs up to £5.6bn in order to deliver its IT plans, and it has submitted a bid for that amount to the government spending review.

Details of the bid were outlined in a paper by DoH director of informatics delivery management Tim Donohoe, which was first seen by HSJ.

The bid, which hadn't been made public, is understood to have been submitted in September, with the DoH eager to find out whether it will receive its entire allocated budget when the government review announcement is made on 25 November. On that date, the government is expected to announce the spending plans for each department until 2019-20.

The paper said: "On September 4, the DoH submitted a [spending review] bid for technology, data and digital with an estimated range of costs of £3.3bn to £5.6bn, and signalled to [the Treasury] that more work was needed to refine the costs."

The department spent three months looking into its technology programmes and identifying which of the projects should be prioritised, as well as analysing their estimated costs and benefits, with the help of consultants from Deloitte and McKinsey.

But its overall estimate of costs was still subject to internal review and validation by NHS stakeholders.

Donohoe's paper splits its requirements for funding into nine "domains". The biggest of the domains is under the paper-free healthcare section, which incorporates electronic health records, e-medicine supply chain and digital diagnostics. The department estimates that these projects will require just over £3bn.

Three other projects are estimated to require more than £700m. These include transforming general practice IT (£789m), data for outcomes and research (£747m) and improvements to the underlying NHS infrastructure (£761m) - this includes email systems, and the NHS Spine 2, which was deemed a success last year.