System failure?

The £12.7bn NHS computer programme is five years behind schedule and beset by criticism, viruses and fears over patient privacy. So should the world's biggest IT project be scrapped? Andy Beckett investigates At some point last November, an infection began to spread unnoticed through the three hospitals that make up Barts and The London NHS Trust in east London. This was not MRSA but the Mytob worm, a common but potent computer virus. It steadily slowed and choked the 4,700 PCs of the trust's network. By noon on 17 November, a Monday, the network was effectively crippled. The following day, the trust declared an "internal major incident". Ambulances carry-ing accident and emergency patients were diverted to other hospitals. Operations were postponed. The appointments system was suspended. Access to clinical information - usually quick and electronic - was maintained only by the slowest and most old-fashioned of methods: "runners" drafted in from the trust's administrative departments pounded the hospitals' endless twisting corridors with paper notes and printouts. Scores of computer technicians from the private sector and from other London NHS trusts were brought in to eradicate the virus, but the PCs had to be decontaminated one by one. It was a week before the crisis was officially declared over, and a fortnight before the hospitals, some of the busiest in the capital, returned to normal. Afterwards, an official report found the virus had been able to infiltrate them because their anti-virus software "did not reach all [their] PCs and ... was configured incorrectly on some". The whole episode, the report concluded, had been "entirely avoidable". The Barts incident, and a series of similar virus attacks on British hospitals since 2007, is the subject of an investigation by More4 News to be broadcast tonight. The More4 report reflects a longstanding concern about the vulnerability of the NHS to computer viruses and hackers.

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System failure?