Milburn 'earmarks' £85m for IT as boost to modernisation

Health secretary Alan Milburn has announced that an additional£85m will be available for IT in the NHS in the next financial year The money will be in addition to the£140m already due to be available as part of the government's seven-year,£1bn investment in IT announced as part of the Information for Health strategy launched in 1998.

Mr Milburn told a conference of NHS chief executives sponsored by Microsoft that the money would be 'earmarked' for IT projects.

Three-quarters of the money supposedly hypothecated for NHS IT this year was spent on meeting other pressures, in particular waiting times.

Dr Richard Gibbs, chair of the NHS chief executive's IT forum, who admitted being 'one of the thieves', told the same conference that this had been 'the lowest point' for NHS IT since the strategy was announced.

'We need new forms of ringfencing, ' he said, shortly before Mr Milburn's announcement.

The Department of Health said that£55.5m of the£85m was allocated to health authorities;

£30m is held centrally to be allocated shortly.

Mr Milburn used the conference to stress the importance of IT to the modernisation agenda.

He said that the Wanless report to the Treasury had underpinned the government's new emphasis on patient choice.

Government ministers and chief executives needed to champion IT he said - while admitting that he didn't understand what the 'M' in IM&T stood for and that he was even more confused by the Wanless report's use of ICT.

Director of research and development at the DoH and conference chair Sir John Pattison promised delegates he would let Mr Milburn know that the 'M' stood for management. The 'C' in ICT stands for communications.

The NHS recently became Microsoft's fifth biggest customer by signing a multi-million deal for its software licences.

Mr Milburn said the NHS would be using its 'purchasing power' in similar deals with Novel and Lotus and entering into more publicprivate partnerships.

Big deals with a new collaboration of eight IT firms called Lightbulb are being negotiated in two NHS regions.

Strategic health authorities would be expected to support and deliver local IT strategies, he said, and the 2002-03 'earmarked' allocations for IT were the 'minimum' that trusts and commissioners were expected to spend.

'It is one of the big frustrations of our staff that they do not have the clinical information systems to support them, ' he said.

'We have to understand that this is central to the modernisation agenda and patient choice.'