NHS IT is poorly justified
Possible benefits to the health service offered by computer technology are being put at risk by inadequate evaluations of trials.
This is the conclusion of an Institute for Public Policy Research report “Public value in e-health”.
Poor evaluation of pilot services that are being rolled out across the
NHS makes it impossible to tell whether new services will deliver the
expected benefits, the report says.
So far as electronic prescription transfer is concerned, the report says
that technical delays and poor patient recruitment meant that the three
pilot projects were not comprehensively evaluated, leaving it unclear
whether expected benefits are deliverable. The best the evaluation team
could do was to repeat some of the theoretically possible benefits that
the Department of Health hoped to see (PJ, 27 September 2003, p393).
Report author Jamie Bend said: “The potential benefits of information
and communications technology use in the health service could be huge.” However,
he added that unless it is proven that things like electronic health
records work, it will remain difficult to justify to doctors, nurses
and patients existing and additional spending on information and communications
technology.
Public Value in eHealth
http://www.ippr.org/research/files/team34/project143/Bend_PublicValueandeHealth_ippr.pdf
PJ 27 September 2002, p393
ETP is viable but consent is a problem
http://www.pharmj.com/Editorial/20030927/news/etpisviable.html
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