U.K.'s patient e-booking system falls behind schedule

One of the centerpiece projects in the massive IT infrastructure upgrade of the U.K. National Health Service is running behind schedule due to "early stability problems with the central system," according to the agency.

The project, an e-booking system called Choose and Book, is currently being tested by four early adopter sites in a pilot program that began in August. The system is intended to let users schedule out-patient hospital appointments,

Currently, "fewer than 100" live bookings had been made on the system, a spokesman for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) said Monday. The spokesman declined to specify what the target number for the system is, other than to say, "though there have been fewer bookings than we had aimed for, we are not widely off our mark and are not behind for achieving the roll out."

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One of the centerpiece projects in the massive IT infrastructure upgrade of the U.K. National Health Service is running behind schedule due to "early stability problems with the central system," according to the agency.

The project, an e-booking system called Choose and Book, is currently being tested by four early adopter sites in a pilot program that began in August. The system is intended to let users schedule out-patient hospital appointments,

Currently, "fewer than 100" live bookings had been made on the system, a spokesman for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) said Monday. The spokesman declined to specify what the target number for the system is, other than to say, "though there have been fewer bookings than we had aimed for, we are not widely off our mark and are not behind for achieving the roll out."

The NPfIT declined to be more specific about the problems with the Choose and Book system other than to say that the core technology for the system is now in place and has been tested to manage 500 million appointments a year. "Bookings are being made by all the early adopters," the NPfIT spokesman said.

Though a second set of early adopters planned to participate in the program in the fourth quarter, that will most likely be postponed until January at the earliest, the spokesman said.

NPfIT will not name the four current participants. However, the Barnsley Primary Care Trust is a known participant. Representatives for the hospital group could not immediately be reached for comment.

Atos Origin International BV, in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, won the primary contract for the e-booking system last year, and Cerner, of Kansas City, Mo., provided the software. Representatives for Atos Origin and Cerner could not immediately be reached for comment.

The system is designed to handle 13 million outpatient consultations, 4 million emergency admissions and 617 million prescriptions, according to Cerner. The NHS serves 52 million people in England and employs 1.3 million people.

Choose and Book is part of an overall NHS IT program that is forecast to cost U.K. taxpayers between £15 billion ($28.4 billion) and £30 billion by 2013. The U.K. government's Department of Health raised that estimate last month from its previous estimate of £6.2 billion.

The British Medical Association (BMA) added to the NPfIT's Choose and Book headaches when it expressed its concerns with the overall privacy of the e-booking system. The BMA on Monday warned that general practitioners may boycott the system if they are not convinced that the confidentiality and security of patient records are beyond reproach.

"A Choose and Book appointment cannot be concluded until an electronic referral has been made by the general practitioner. At the moment it would be impossible to do so confidentially as electronic referrals are not yet coded in a way that keeps them secure," Dr. Laurence Buckman, deputy chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.