NHS IT is beginning to understand that it's about 'joining up', not 'rebuilding'...

NHS trusts are faced with the task of upgrading their own IT systems after the collapse of a proposed £11 billion government database. The project, among the largest ever considered in UK government IT, had already cost the British taxpayer £6.4 billion since its inception in 2002, £2.4 billion of which was spent on attempting to interlink patient records to other existing, incompatible systems across the country. Yesterday MPs accused the government of profligacy with taxpayers' money on an 'unworkable' project, claiming that NHS management could have avoided 'some of the pitfalls and waste if they had consulted at the start of the process with health professionals'.

IT projects, particularly those overseen by the UK government, seem to be one area where aggregate effort and expenditure bring no savings - every economy made by throwing huge resources at gargantuan proposed infrastructures appears to be a false one. Now, though London hospitals are scheduled for £31 million of government funds from a new deal with BT in the capital, many outlying NHS trusts currently stuck with outdated and isolated IT infrastructures may be left to make their own arrangements out of their own financial resources.

Creating joined-up IT infrastructure isn't a question of colossal construction, but of expert joining-up of out-dated IT systems that may be difficult or even impossible to upgrade, but which will communicate and exchange information very happily in virtualised environments set up specifically for the task. From that point onward, all future upgrade requirements can be met outside of the 'legacy' system's own environment. After all, the information doesn't care which version of a hypervisor is running it..?

But all these easier, quicker and cheaper solutions were immature back when Tony Blair's government contemplated an information 'superstructure' for the NHS. If you're faced with disparate systems that are too unwieldy or expensive to upgrade, or that simply cannot be made interoperative with the newer systems they need to interface with, you aren't necessarily faced with developing expensive custom solutions. You're just in need of someone who knows which existing solution can get your information moving again quickly, economically, securely, and to your specifications. This isn't 2002 - business virtualisation solutions have been working the 'interoperability' problem for over a decade now, and the current solutions are mature, versatile and affordable.

The National Programme for IT in the NHS: an update on the delivery of detailed care records systems