NHS Â£6.2bn computer system probed
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Government spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, is to investigate a Â£6.2bn programme to install a computer system at the NHS.
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Pay for NHS consultants has risen by 16% in the last three years, with average salaries in excess of Â£110,000, figures show.
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A device to send heart test results down the phone line for analysis could save the NHS millions, a trial suggests.
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Public money paid to private firm iSoft Plc, the beleaguered NHS software provider, has been given two large chunks of cash totalling close to Â£82m over the last two years, the government has admitted.â¦
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Propose switch to decentralised, interoperable databases The Tory party has put forward a rescue plan for the NHS IT system in the wake of the latest government data losses, which were revealed over the weekend. Nine English NHS trusts have owned up to large scale losses of personal data, and although in most cases the nature of this data has yet to be revealed, City &amp; Hackney Primary Care Trust reportedly mislaid the names and addresses of 160,000 children.â¦
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IT firm Accenture pulls out of key parts of a beleaguered Â£6.2bn upgrade of the NHS computer system.
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The cost of a 10-year contract to run computers for Revenue and Customs has doubled to Â£8.5bn, MPs say.
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Upgrade waiting list just too long The government's vision of an integrated computer system for the NHS is coming apart at the seams as NHS trusts are to start looking for alternative IT suppliers, The Guardian reports.â¦
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And then there were two The UK government is spending Â£208m per year on running websites but many of them are text heavy and crammed with policy information that citizens couldnât give a monkeyâs about.â¦
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An OFT inquiry finds the NHS is paying hundreds of millions of pounds too much for branded drugs, the BBC learns.
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By ROBBIE DINWOODIE CHIEF SCOTTISH POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT  A GBP14M computerisation project completed by Scottish Enterprise last year is to be scrapped in favour of a new system costing GBP7m, prompting an MSP to demand an investigation by ministers.
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Sickness absence in the NI Civil Service is on the increase, and has cost  Â£25.6m this year.
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THOUSANDS of pensioners and people on benefits have been hit by a massive computer failure at the Department for Work and Pensions.
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The British government has admitted its ambitous database project could cost millions to maintain.
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The head of the U.K. National Health Service has defended plans to build a centralized database of patient records following another embarrassing loss of personal information by the government.The U.K. Department of Health admitted this weekend that nine of its regional NHS trusts have reported losing patient data. One of the trusts, the City and Hackney Primary Care Trust, in east London, lost the medical records for about 160,000 children, according to newspaper reports. The total number of records has not been disclosed.The losses emerged as part of a wider review following similar government blunders, and have revived questions about the security of building a centralized patient records database, part of the U.K.&#39;s National Programme for IT (NPfIT). But David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, said the project is essential and should go ahead.&quot;It&#39;s vitally important that when a doctor is sitting in front of a patient they have all the information they need at their fingertips, and that&#39;s what&#39;s been driving us through all this,&quot; Nicholson told BBC Radio 4&#39;s Today program on Monday.The proposed system will not be a single large records database, but a series of interconnected regional databases, he said. And the security system will be more rigorous than that used with most Internet banking systems, according to Nicholson.&quot;You&#39;d need a user name, a password and a smart card [to access patient records] and you would have role-controlled access,&quot; he said. &quot;So a nurse on a ward with a smart card and a password could only access a relatively small number of patient records.&quot;The information that was reported lost over the weekend was encrypted and so not vulnerable to misuse, Nicholson said.But Ross Anderson, a security expert at the University of Cambridge, told Radio 4 that whether the data is encrypted is not the main issue.&quot;One of the questions you have to ask here is not whether the data was encrypted or password protected, but why someone was able to have access to 160,000 children&#39;s records,&quot; he said. &quot;In private industry ... if someone tried to make off with hundreds of thousands of records the alarms would sound.&quot;Opposition leaders pounced on the latest misstep as evidence that the Labour government can&#39;t be trusted with its citizens&#39; data. They called for further studies to show how the proposed patient records system would protect privacy.The incident comes after the U.K.&#39;s HM Revenue and Customs lost personal records for 25 million Britons, and the Driving Standards Agency lost records for more than 3 million learner drivers.&quot;The power of technology means it can be very easy to use the information, but also very easy to lose the information,&quot; the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said on the Today program. &quot;The events of the last few weeks have woken up everybody to the importance of taking these matters seriously.&quot;&#160;
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Fresh concerns are raised over the Â£6.8bn upgrade after it emerged there were 110 glitches in the last four months.
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One of the first foundation NHS trusts is facing intervention after recording a budget deficit.