A NEW £117 million telecommunications and IT system at NHS 24 has been withdrawn from service on the grounds of patient safety after major technical problems.

Bosses at Scotland's medical-help advice line have been forced to go back to a previous telecommunications system following a number of issues.

As HeraldScotland revealed last month, NHS 24's multi-million-pound system was abandoned after just one hour - and this was followed by further IT problems that beset the Scottish Government's clocking system. 

In spite of a huge amount of planning, system testing and staff training, the performance of the NHS 24 service over the past ten days since it went live has proved extremely challenging, the service said.

NHS 24 said it had withdrawn its Future Programme from service and moved back to its legacy system, on the grounds of patient safety.

NHS 24 chief executive Ian Crichton said: "Major IT upgrades always bring a degree of challenge, but what makes implementation of our new technology solution unusually difficult is the need to keep patients safe, while we get it fully operational.

"As winter approaches we expect weekend call volumes to significantly increase and our forecast indicates that service levels at weekends would fall below acceptable tolerances. It is for this reason that we have taken the decision today to roll back. 

"While we will maintain the delivery of safe care to patients, we will continue to develop the new system offline and renew preparations to reintroduce the solution in early 2016. 

"This is not a decision that we have taken lightly, given the significant investment to date,  but one that will ensure we can continue to deliver vital and safe out of hours support to patients when they need it most during the coming winter."