NPfIT chief 'not proud' of its lateness

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The head of Connecting for Health (CfH), the organisation responsible for the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), has admitted he is "not proud" of the programme's lateness.

Speaking at the Smart Healthcare Live event in London, Martin Bellamy admitted that it was not an acceptable performance so far.

To remedy this, Bellamy said CfH hoped to demonstrate progress on acute hospital systems by November 2009. He said there would be a further Cerner implementation by then and that Kingston would go live in the first half of October.

The troubled Lorenzo software was also expected to have version 1.9 live in at least one trust with a significant acute hospital live by the end of March 2010.

"The current year is about getting the remaining components proven," he said. "The next, realistically, three years, is the deployment period."

He said the deployment would start gradually in 2010, with it then gathering pace in 2011 and 2012.

"I never say it's done until it's done, and there's no room for complacency," he added. "I think we've got a good chance, a better than a fighting chance, but the moment we say it's done before it's done, it's at that point that the teams take their eye off the ball and it begins to slip further away from us.

"I never say it's easy or guaranteed."