Comments on: Don’t Fear Progress http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_burke/2009/04/17/dont-fear-progress/ A Member of The Gartner Blog Network Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:14:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Joseph M. Bugajski http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_burke/2009/04/17/dont-fear-progress/comment-page-1/#comment-18 Joseph M. Bugajski Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:46:31 +0000 http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_burke/?p=80#comment-18 Point taken: the UK's NHS Programme for IT presents a wonderful vision. So does the US version. Point contested: the "UK is reaping the benefits". Unfortunately, serious challenges persist in the UK at the scale noted in my ealier post. Richard Woods ("Darling swings the axe", The Sunday Times, April 12, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6078496.ece) wrote, "Or take the grandiose plan to create a central NHS computer system. Originally budgeted at £2.3 billion, it is now expected to cost £12.7 billion. It is years behind schedule, may never work as promised and is seen by many doctors as a waste of money." In an earlier article, The Sunday Times' Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas and Lois Rogers reported their concerns with the massive NHS IT programme ("Focus: Anatomy of a £15bn gamble", April 16, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article706148.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1). This despite IT being run as a national service. Contrast that situation with the US where HIT is fragmented and the IT systems highly variable even within the same organization. It would be wonderful if HIT could deliver President Obama's or former PM Tony Blair's vision. It would also be wonderful if HIT was about "saving lives". Tragically, the opposite may be true. Poorly implemented HIT can kill (e.g., see Dr. Scot Silverstein's posts, http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/). While a national HIT network may someday deliver "life-saving" technology, achieving that vision will be a long, expensive journey that requires a renewed emphasis on user interface design and data engineering fundamentals. Point taken: the UK’s NHS Programme for IT presents a wonderful vision. So does the US version. Point contested: the “UK is reaping the benefits”. Unfortunately, serious challenges persist in the UK at the scale noted in my ealier post.

Richard Woods (“Darling swings the axe”, The Sunday Times, April 12, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6078496.ece) wrote, “Or take the grandiose plan to create a central NHS computer system. Originally budgeted at £2.3 billion, it is now expected to cost £12.7 billion. It is years behind schedule, may never work as promised and is seen by many doctors as a waste of money.” In an earlier article, The Sunday Times’ Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas and Lois Rogers reported their concerns with the massive NHS IT programme (“Focus: Anatomy of a £15bn gamble”, April 16, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article706148.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1). This despite IT being run as a national service. Contrast that situation with the US where HIT is fragmented and the IT systems highly variable even within the same organization.

It would be wonderful if HIT could deliver President Obama’s or former PM Tony Blair’s vision. It would also be wonderful if HIT was about “saving lives”. Tragically, the opposite may be true. Poorly implemented HIT can kill (e.g., see Dr. Scot Silverstein’s posts, http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/).

While a national HIT network may someday deliver “life-saving” technology, achieving that vision will be a long, expensive journey that requires a renewed emphasis on user interface design and data engineering fundamentals.

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