THE launch of a new IT system at NHS 24 - which is already three years late and £50 million over budget - has been delayed again after running into fresh technical difficulties.
The multi-million pound system for handling calls from sick and worried patients was due to go live in June but a new problem which was causing computer screens to appear blank has forced bosses to delay the planned roll-out date of June 14.
Concern among staff about being equipped to use the new system in time is also said to be behind the postponement.
READ MORE: NHS 24 nurses thought no-one would listen if they spoke up about beleaguered new technology
No new launch date has yet been announced although in a statement NHS 24 said they are still planning to put the system into service this summer.
Until the new IT is implemented, the health board is incurring double running costs as they are funding the new programme at the same time as using the package it was due to replace at a cost of around £450,000 per month.
Dr Richard Simpson, who has recently stepped down as a Labour MSP, questioned NHS 24 managers about the fiasco when they appeared before Holyrood’s public audit committee.
Dr Simpson said: “The NHS executives were confident that the relaunch in June would be successful. This further delay adds more costs in joint running of the old system. I still have no confidence that the Scottish Government has the capability of managing the development of major new IT systems.”
Called the Future Programme, the new telecommunications system at NHS 24 has been beleaguered from the start with key elements left out of the official contract.
At times the parties have been locked in legal action and Ian Crichton, who spent six months running NHS 24 after the previous chief executive quit, said every time they hit problems the contract provided more protection to the supplier than the NHS.
When NHS 24 tried to launch the new technology in November they had to abort because the time to deal with each patient caller had increased so much it raised safety fears.
Issues with the training staff had received have since been identified and NHS 24 has stressed the importance of ensuring call handlers, nurses and other personnel are comfortable with the IT before they attempt a relaunch.
The new technical issue is said to relate to how the internet browser operates to support the system. Once it has been resolved, the health board says time will be required to test again before going live.
In a statement NHS 24 said: “NHS 24 has been planning to put its new technology system into service during the summer of 2016 and that plan remains the same. Our board recently considered proposals to launch the system in June, but this was dependent on full technical assurance as well as an assessment of staff readiness. A technical issue, which was very recently highlighted by suppliers, combined with staff feedback, means we must take the appropriate time to get this right.”
They added: “We will not put the technology into service until the board have received guidance from expert advisors and the programme team on the most suitable date to launch.”
Professor Martyn Thomas, Livery Company professor of information technology at Gresham College in London, has lectured on the reasons why major public sector projects often seem to run into problems. He said the issues at at NHS 24 were “unfortunately not extraordinary.” He continued: “People go into something thinking it is a technology project when it is primarily a business change project. They invest a lot of money in the technology but they do not invest the time and investment and management in sorting out the new business processes and making sure they are really practical and the frontline staff who are going to deliver them have really agreed this will work... What happens then is you start off with an IT project which does not have a good set of requirements because it has not been worked through.”
He added that the “IT industry is not really very competent” with programmers making an error around once in every 10 lines. He said: “The demands that are placed on IT by society are enormous, but the industry has only been around for 70 years... When the civil engineers were this old they had not even invented the brick yet.”
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