British Electronic Health Record Collapse Sparks Lawsuit

http://ow.ly/6Oshu

An article by Neil Versel on informationweek.com.

This article discusses a lawsuit that has arisen over the UK's failed attempt to create a national system for electronic health records.

The author states, "a group of shareholders filed a class-action suit in the United States against Falls Church, Va.-based contractor Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), claiming that CSC "fraudulently concealed that it was incapable of delivering" on a 10-year, 3.1 billion British pound ($5.4 billion) contract with the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS).

The lawsuit accused CSC and several top executives of issuing a series of misleading statements related to the company's ability to build Lorenzo, a software platform that was to be the foundation for a major part of the NHS's electronic health records (EHR) system."

The article goes on to state, "Prime minister David Cameron's government is moving ahead with plans to create smaller, regional networks of EHRs.

Cameron's Conservative government announced September 22 that it would accelerate the "dismantling" of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) after nine years and 11.4 billion pounds ($17.8 billion). "The NPfIT achieved much in terms of infrastructure and this will be maintained, along with national applications, such as the Summary Care Record and Electronic Prescriptions Service, which are crucial to improving patient safety and efficiency. But we need to move on from a top-down approach and instead provide information systems driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money and that the modern NHS meets the needs of patients," the U.K.'s Department of Health said."