The NHS will continue to fail without funding

The NHS has been ridiculed for its continued use of outdated equipment but it lacks the funding to improve

The government has told the NHS to phase out its use of over 9,000 fax machines by 2020 with a ban on buying them to be put in place from the beginning of January 2019.

The government fears that fax machines can be insecure, and NHS staff have been circumventing the system with third-party applications such as WhatsApp and Snapchat.

The fact that such an old and insecure technology is still being used by the NHS is a huge weakness.

Fax use renders data leaks more likely, and mistakes easier to make. And this is an especially big problem for the NHS, which manages medical records and other types of sensitive information.

Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress Software evidently agrees: "Fax machines provide a large surface area for human error and consequently data breaches" this magnifies my point about how this is a huge nationwide problem.

He also stated that the NHS needs to "understand the sensitivity of the data it controls, subsequently applying a combination of encryption, rights management, machine learning and policy based access."

So we can agree that essentially the NHS needs to drastically improve its security in order to ensure that individuals' private information is safe.

That's all very well, but how is that going to be possible with its current funding model, especially given the years of austerity it has suffered?

The NHS is underfunded compared with other countries' health systems, as this data from NHS Confederation shows:

"In 2016 health expenditure in the UK was 9.75 per cent of GDP. This compares to 17.21 per cent in the USA, 11.27 per cent in Germany, 10.98 per cent in France, 10.50 per cent in the Netherlands, 10.37 per cent in Denmark, 10.34 per cent in Canada, 8.98 per cent in Spain and 8.94 per cent in Italy.

"In 2016 expenditure per capita (using the purchasing power parity) for the UK was $4,192. This can be compared to $9,892 in the USA, $5,551 in Germany, $5,385 in the Netherlands, $5,199 in Denmark, $4,644 in Canada, $4,600 in France, $3,391 in Italy and $3,248 in Spain."

Yes its budgets have increased recently, but many years of under-investment have left the organisation with a wide range of creaking systems and under-resourced and underskilled teams.

We spend far less on the NHS than most other countries, yet our expectations remain high.

In conclusion the NHS has a security problem and that problem will continue until it receives a significant funding boost.

It's unlikely to be able to find the money for upgrades, new systems and the staff required to lead, manage and support those initiatives until the government recognises the investment need.

Let's stop blaming the NHS, and point the finger at the government.