MP’s tweet about NHS IT is off the mark

Marlborough News Online has been alerted to Devizes MP Claire Perry’s tweet on Thursday (September 5) in response to the National Audit Office’s critical report on the Universal Credit scheme.

Mrs Perry tweeted about Labour’s “failure on NHS IT that was scrapped with NO benefit.”

It has been pointed out that although delayed and way over budget, Labour’s IT programme for the NHS had produced several important benefits.

Among those benefits are the NHS secure email system, the Choose and Book system (still not fully in place), picture capture and transfer for X-rays, the Summary Care Record system and several other IT schemes in use now by hospital trusts and in both primary and secondary care.

When the NHS IT scheme was scrapped by the coalition government, even the government’s own Department of Health said (August 3, 2011) that “elements of the programme have been delivered successfully.”