“Mad [magazine] used the word ‘ecch’ or its cousin ‘blecch’ as an all-purpose expression of disgust so often that even The Simpsons made passing references to the practice” (Wikipedia)
Is there anything more to say about the European Centre for Connected Health (ECCH) based in Belfast? (Not to be confused with the entirely separate European Connected Health Campus, also in Belfast)
After more than two years of burning up taxpayers’ money it has still not managed to announce the winner of the tender for the NI Remote Patient Monitoring Service AND IT IS NOW TWO YEARS TO THE DAY that it began the formal part of the tendering procedure.
Already in May last year I bemoaned the lack of action in the Telecare Aware item Northern Ireland’s ‘unhappy first birthday’ approaches and, in a follow up item in September I pointed out that “…any one of the four short listed consortia could probably make a reasonable fist of delivering the required service and that with every week which passes more and more patients who could benefit are not doing so, it is shameful that more progress has not been made and one has to ask why.”
The question is even more pertinent today. The companies enmeshed in this tender have been spinning their wheels, waiting, wondering, and incurring costs in a series of ‘beauty parade events’ while someone, somewhere, makes up their mind. Blecch indeed!