Swindells: Don't compromise NPfIT vision

Prolonged contract renegotiations with local service providers risk compromising the central vision of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, the Department of Health’s former acting chief information officer has warned.

Matthew Swindells, who led a review of NHS informatics before leaving the DH to head up Tribal Group’s healthcare practice, told E-Health Insider he was concerned the renegotiations could lose sight of the “core vision of integrated systems to support integrated care.”

“If they compromise on the core vision... we will have spent a lot of money and not delivered the infrastructure that the NHS needs to transform quality and cost of care,” he said.

Swindells recently took up a new post as head of BCS Health, the new incarnation of the British Computer Society’s health informatics forum.

In an interview with EHI to mark his new post, he rejected claims that the NHS would have been better off without the national programme.

He argued that while it had made some mistakes, NHS organisations should also “step up and take responsibility” for some of its problems.

However, he also argued that it was vital for the programme to finally deliver to trusts, and for the agenda to switch from technology to making use of the information it can generate.

Opinion and analysis: Read the full interview in Opinion and Analysis.