NHS staff reveal serious concerns over IT plan.

The article reports that some staff and executives of the British National Health Service (NHS) involved in implementing the national programme for IT (NPfIT) have serious misgivings about aspects of the scheme, including its failure to engage local health employees. Their concerns were highlighted in a paper titled "Challenges to Implementing the National Programme for IT: A Qualitative Study," published in the British Medical Journal. An IT manager in one of the trusts told the researchers that the NPfIT had organised "some wonderful events" but that communication had been "absolutely appalling". The paper also acknowledged that some of the biggest problems that could affect the success of the NPfIT were not always within the power of those running the national programme to solve. Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said that large-scale public IT projects do not have a good track record in Great Britain and so it is paramount that the NHS learns the lessons of history and engages wherever possible with the frontline staff who will be using the new systems to deliver better patient care. She added that Connecting for Health, which is running the IT programme, had "more recently made significant progress in its efforts to involve NHS staff."