Reducing IT Operational Costs in the NHS: A Proposal
This report investigates IT operational management challenges within the UK's National Health Service (NHS) and proposes actionable recommendations to reduce escalating IT costs. The NHS, which employs approximately 1.7 million people and serves over 52 million patients, has long relied on external IT service providers such as Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), driving up operational expenditure on a programme already estimated at £12 billion. The report identifies root causes including an acute shortage of qualified in-house IT staff, inadequate risk management, and underfunding of internal IT capacity. It recommends expanding the in-house IT team, delivering targeted IT training for both technical and medical staff, relocating hardware infrastructure, and building a secure data centre. A phased three-year implementation plan with a budget of £1.5 million is outlined, along with an honest assessment of constraints including the UK's broader IT skills gap and competing government funding priorities.
- Introduction: NHS history, scale, and IT ambitions
- Internal and External Context of the Problem: Root causes of NHS IT cost overruns and failures
- Statement and Analysis of the Problem: Operational IT failures and management shortcomings
- Proposals and Recommendations: In-house staffing, training, and infrastructure changes
- Implementation Plan: Phased three-year plan with timescales per initiative
- Analysis of Recommendations and Implementation Plan: Constraints, skills gap, and funding challenges assessed
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper maintains a clear problem-solution structure, moving logically from organisational context through root-cause analysis to concrete, costed recommendations with a phased timeline.
- It balances internal and external perspectives on the problem by drawing on both academic sources (Boddy et al., Hendy et al., Willcocks & Mark) and government reports, lending credibility to its diagnosis.
- The recommendations section is specific rather than generic — naming particular locations (Maidstone, Tavelyan, Harrogate), technologies (media encryption, relational databases), and training modules (spreadsheets, databases, presentations), which makes the proposal actionable.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of secondary source synthesis to build an evidence base for policy recommendations. Rather than relying on a single source, the author layers multiple peer-reviewed studies alongside government reports to triangulate the problem before proposing solutions — a technique common in public-sector management and health informatics literature.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an abstract summarising purpose, findings, and budget. The introduction contextualises NHS history and IT ambitions. Two diagnostic sections (internal/external context and problem analysis) precede the recommendations. A detailed tabular implementation plan assigns timescales to each initiative, followed by a critical self-assessment section that acknowledges potential obstacles such as the UK IT skills shortage and budget competition. References follow APA conventions throughout.
Introduction
The National Health Service (NHS) is a UK publicly funded health organisation. It was launched in 1948 to deliver primary and secondary healthcare services. The primary healthcare delivered by NHS consists of GP practices, optician health services, pharmacies, walk-in centres, and NHS Direct. The secondary healthcare consists of care trusts, mental health trusts, emergency and care trusts, and NHS trusts. Since its formation in 1948, the NHS has grown to become the largest publicly funded health organisation in the world. It presently employs approximately 1.7 million people, of whom roughly half are clinically qualified. NHS England is the biggest healthcare provider in the UK, catering for approximately 52 million people, with around 3 million people treated every week.
One of the major strategic focuses of the organisation is to put information at the heart of decision-making in order to improve the quality and standards of care and to increase efficiency across the English NHS and adult social care sector (National Health Service, 2009, p. 4). More importantly, NHS aims to reduce the burden of data collection and ensure that adequate resources are devoted to the storage, collection, analysis, and dissemination of data, and to make positive changes regarding clinical services. To achieve this objective, the UK government approved an information technology (IT) project for NHS to deliver efficient clinical services to the UK population. Despite this ambition, the IT department within NHS faces several challenges in the effective operation of IT policies.
The objective of this report is to investigate the issues related to IT operations management within the NHS IT department, identify the challenges facing the department in implementing IT policies effectively, and provide recommendations on how to reduce the costs associated with IT service delivery.
References
Boddy, D., King, G., Clark, J. S., et al. (2009). The influence of context and process when implementing e-health. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 9, 9.
Hackney, R. A., & McBride, N. K. (2003). The efficacy of information systems in the public sector: Issues of context and culture. Research Paper, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Hendy, J., Fulop, N., Reeves, B. C., et al. (2007). Implementing the NHS information technology programme: Qualitative study of progress in acute trusts. BMJ.
Hendy, J., Reeves, B. C., Fulop, N., et al. (2005). Challenges to implementing the national programme for information technology (NPfIT): A qualitative study. BMJ, 331(7512), 331–336.
Jeffcott, M., & Johnson, C. (2006). The use of a formalised risk model in NHS information system development. Department of Computer Science, University of Glasgow.
Liddell, A., Adshead, S., & Burgess, E. (2008). Technology in the NHS: Transforming the patient's experience of care. The King's Fund.
National Health Service. (2009). The NHS Information Centre IT strategy 2009–2012. NHS Information Centre.
UK Government. (2009). Sector summary report: IT professionals sector.
Warm, D. L., Thomas, S. E., Heard, V. R., et al. (2009). Benefits of information technology training to National Health Service staff in Wales. Learning in Health and Social Care, 8(1), 70–80.
Willcocks, L., & Mark, A. (2009). Information technology in the NHS: From strategy to implementation. Public Money & Management, 8(3), 41–43.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.