Public services across the country have been feeling the pinch for a long while, but staff at NHS hospitals are concerned that this has reached a crit

The NHS is in an IT ‘stone age’, staff struggle with creaking infrastructure

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2024-10-17 12:30:10

Public services across the country have been feeling the pinch for a long while, but staff at NHS hospitals are concerned that this has reached a critical point. The British Medical Association, the UK’s main doctors union, estimated that doctors lost 13.5 million hours a year as a consequence of “inadequate IT systems and equipment”.

IT systems probably aren’t many people’s first thought when it comes to public spending, but they are crucial in keeping the NHS functioning and helping staff save lives. Since the 2010s the UK has spent almost £37 billion less on health assets than neighboring countries, such as France and Germany.

“I am at a top London hospital and yet at times I feel as though we are operating in the Stone Age,” a pediatrician told Forbes. Doctors and nurses have outlined the need for all basic infrastructure to be raised to a minimum standard before new projects are taken on.

According to the NHS’s own estimates, just 20% of its organisations are "digitally mature", with some reporting an "enormous variation in basic infrastructure" within hospitals that slows systems down.