To Go and To Come?
In its editorial the Health Service Journal of the 19 April 2007 says Mr. Richard Granger, the Director General of NHS IT is "expected to leave soon". Now how many times have I heard that in the last 2-3 years? Nonetheless, the recent mostly critical report on NHS National Programme for IT by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PDF 4.5Mb) cannot have strengthened his position.
The HSJ also refers to a report by Professor Sir Ara Darzi, the national advisor on surgery and one of the medical profession's rare technological innovators. In Saws and Scalpels to Lasers and Robots Professor Darzi suggests 80 percent of local surgery could be carried out in health centres and large GP practices.
It seems if anything is going to drive NHS modernisation it will be public expectation combined with the march of technology--with or without a centrally led IT programme.
A nail-pierced hand catches a man falling from a rooftop and hoists him to safety: just one potent image from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner which I recently watched again. The hand is that of the fearsome genetically engineered replicant Roy Batty who mercifully saves Rick Deckard—the blade runner who has been pursuing him through a rain-sodden Los Angeles in a 2019 dystopia. After the encounter Deckard looks as though he could do with the services of a physiotherapist—but even in 2007 s/he may not be human. 
