£6bn NHS IT overhaul about 'automation not innovation'

The NHS' £6bn IT programme will merely provide the kind of bog standard automation familiar to the private sector for a decade by excluding innovative small and medium sized IT vendors, according to new research.

The claims are made in the Wireless eHealth and the National Programme for IT white paper by UK-based consultancy Wireless Healthcare.

"The applications that make up the NPfIT, while regarded as revolutionary by the NHS, will merely provide the level of automation most large commercial organisations have been enjoying for almost a decade," the report said.

Smaller IT suppliers are finding themselves being dropped by their "evangelistic" early adopters within the NHS who now have to toe the line with "risk averse" local service providers (LSPs) responsible for the regional implementation of the national e-booking and electronic patient records.

The white paper suggests that smaller and more innovative suppliers should form alliances to offer bundles of healthcare applications that would be more attractive to the LSPs than a confusing selection of individual products.

"An alliance of vendors would find it easier to negotiate with the companies that have already won contracts to supply the NHS with IT infrastructure," the report said.

There is also a warning that as applications are deployed and pressure builds for the NHS to use IT to cut costs, the NPfIT will encounter resistance from NHS staff.

"Technology such as wireless tagging of patients, blood plasma packs and medicine bottles - which reduces medical errors - should be welcomed with open arms by medical staff. It will be less popular however if it is used to identify the members of staff who are responsible for those errors," the report said.