Where have all the NHS IT champions gone?

Dick Vinegar, the Patient from Hell, wonders in The Guardian, why IT-literate junior doctors do not go on to push technological initiatives later in their career. “Something happens to deprive doctors of their appetite for being the champions of technical change. It may be they are blocked by the obstruction of administrators and superiors… The system gets them down in the end.” Where have all the NHS IT champions gone?

1 thought on “Where have all the NHS IT champions gone?

  1. [b]Dog Tail Wagging the the[/b]- rearrange into your preferred order

    We employ IT Professionals and because they are a costly resource we want to get the maximum out of them – don’t get me wrong I know some really lovely and clued up IT professionals (I also know some not so clue enabled too) – what we forget to do is make sure they fully understand our core business as well as their IT specialism (after all we don’t understand their profession so why should we expect them to understand ours?)

    We have a culture of risk aversion in the public sector so our IT policy becomes risk averse – preventing staff accessing modern browsers, limiting downloads, making it difficult to join/view webcasts etc

    If we are lucky our IT risk aversity results in strong back up and disaster recovery strategies. If we are less lucky our IT professional recommends running our dispersed alarm service over a VOIP network … if we are really unlucky … becasue that is a cheaper option and because too few people understand fairly basic stuff about technology nobody challenges it!

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