Advertisement
Promo

Compliance Toolkit

NHS witholds BT payment

Kable

Published: 05 Oct 2004 16:10 BST

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

The NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is holding back almost a third of the initial payments due to its main supplier BT, it confirmed on Tuesday.

In a statement issued to Government Computing News the programme said that it had refused to pay £300,000 -- one third of an "initial payment" of £900,000 -- for a key part of the programme known as the data spine. The penalties come following technical problems at the testing stages of the spine project.

"There was a reduction in payments to BT due to some availability issues with the spine," said an NPfIT statement.

"However this should be seen in the context of much early success in the national programme, which is highly complex and remains firmly on track to deliver benefits to patients and clinicians alike. The spine issues have not had a fundamental impact on implementation plans."

There have also been delays to the NPfIT's electronic booking service, particularly in connecting it to doctors' systems.

"Bookings have been taking place at early adopter sites through Choose and Book as planned throughout summer 2004. Whilst this hasn't been through the use of fully integrated systems, this will not impact on the rollout of Choose and Book, which is progressing well and to plan," said the statement.

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendlyPrint with EPSON

Did you find this article useful?
45 out of 108 people found this useful


Full Talkback thread

0 comments

Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:





Video icon

Video

Cloud Watch Special Report

Five cloud computing myths exploded

Five cloud computing myths exploded

Analysis The cloud is providing a fertile habitat for the marketeers and their exaggerated claims. We examine the hokum and debunk the five most frequently peddled misconceptions about the cloud

More Special Reports

Sentry Posts Blog

Authentication risks all too human

Risks to successful online banking identification and authentication using smartcards involve a mixture of human and technological factors, according to the European Network and Information... More

1 comment

Opera censors Chinese content

Opera has updated the Chinese version of its mobile browser to stop users accessing restricted content. Opera Mini was updated on Friday from an international to a Chinese version,... More

2 comments

Symantec website breached

Security company Symantec has said that one of its websites was successfully breached. Romanian security researcher 'Unu' posted details of the breach in a blog post on Monday. Unu... More

Post a comment


Skip Sub Navigation Links to CNET Brand Links

Help

Become part of the ZDNet community.

Newsletters