How to see the outcome of tech fund 2, now there is finally some information about it? On the glass half full view, some money will be injected into NHS IT this year and next, and the distribution of that funding, once it is known, will tell us something about central priorities.

On the glass half empty view, an awful lot of promise, and an awful lot of work, will in the end amount to not all that much; given that the fund has been slashed from £240 million to just £43 million, and just 48 applications have been successful out of more than 200 made.

Commenters posting on the EHI News website tend towards the glass half empty view. Suppliers point out that it’s hard to run the kind of innovative but effective businesses that the NHS says it wants to work with if there is no pipeline for them to deliver into.

Trust posters sound exhausted and disillusioned; not least because all the signs are that the vanishing money has been spent on short-term imperatives, such as shoring up A&E and propping up distressed trusts in the run-up to a general election.

The NHS keeps being told, by politicians, think-tank experts and senior managers, that it needs to invest in big changes to the way that it does things. The politicians, wonks and national directors of this and that who come up ideas for big changes have rarely been interested in their IT implications.

So the ‘paperless’ vision, two tech funds, and new IT framework were all welcomed as indications that things might be changing. Whipping away the tech fund 2 glass and sending it back almost empty sends the opposite message.

Trusts told of cut tech fund 2 awards

NHS England’s second technology fund has been cut by nearly £200 million, with only one-fifth of bidders to receive any money, EHI News has exclusively learned.

IT issues for Manchester NHS devolution

Plans to give Greater Manchester control of an integrated £6 billion NHS and social care budget will need to overcome the technological obstacles of systems integration and data sharing, health IT experts say.

Scots NHS register sharing plans slammed

The Scottish government is facing criticism over plans to share information held in an NHS database with other public bodies.

Newborn screening tech covers England

An IT system to keep track of newborn babies screened for serious genetic conditions has expanded to cover the entirety of England.

Newborn screening tech covers England

An IT system to keep track of newborn babies screened for serious genetic conditions has expanded to cover the entirety of England.

IPP picks CliniSys for new path service

Private provider Integrated Pathology Partnerships has picked CliniSys to help deliver a joined up pathology service for two hospital trusts in south Essex.

Croydon prepares to expand Cerner use

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust has completed integration testing for the second phase of its Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system roll-out; significantly expanding its existing system.

Over in the US of A, a man has been charged with “conspiracy to commit wire fraud” for a scam to provide a non-existent MRI scanner to a Dallas hospital. An FBI statement says Texan Albert Davis has been charged with six others of getting just over a million dollars out of the Dallas Medical Centre as down-payments on the $1.3 million machine.

An affidavit says Davis and his co-conspirators “created a fake Cerner business entity” complete with fake office space, internet domains, email addresses, and a bank account, and persuaded the medical centre that they were working for a company, called iHeart, that was collaborating with Cerner on a break-through in cardiac MRI technology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the alleged fraud was discovered when “the installation was never completed” – leading the hospital to contact the real Cerner to sort things out.

Waiting for 2 long

The fate of tech fund 2 has been up in the air since applications closed seven months ago, frustrating trusts and suppliers alike. Sam Sachdeva reports.

“The real slap in the face is how much it has cost just to get to this point… 226 bids, how many hours spent per trust? Millions, easily, I would have thought. And then there are the suppliers. I’m sure they are really chipper about the whole experience… rest assured their costs will be tagged on to the next bill.”

“From a clinical point of view, not much was going to change, because that’s what the clinical safeguarding lead was asking for. She said: ‘I don’t want a new system that’s wonderful, I want one that’s effective’.”

Steven Ouko, Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s systems integration manager, outlines the clinical edict for the trust’s work on the Child Protection Information Sharing project.