Project Time Line

December 2001
Bill Gates visits Tony Blair at 10 Downing St. in meeting that will prove the genesis of the National Program for Information Technology.

February 2002
At another meeting at No. 10, chaired by Blair and attended by U.K. health-care and Treasury officials as well as Microsoft executives, the NPfIT program is unofficially launched.

June 2002
Program announced by National Health Service (NHS); Department of Health creates a unit, later to be called Connecting for Health (CfH), to procure and deliver I.T. systems for NPfIT.

October 2002
Richard Granger hired as director general of NHS I.T.

February 2003 – February 2004
All major vendor contracts completed during this period.

June 2004
National Data Spine goes live, but NHS announces that efforts to build up its functionality have been delayed.
Accenture signs deal with U.K. health-care company iSoft to provide as-yet-undeveloped clinical and patient care software suite called Lorenzo for its two regions. Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) also signs up iSoft.

December 2004
Local Service Providers say first phases of implementation plan, which were scheduled for delivery in December 2004, are now planned for a pilot form delivery in late 2006.

June 2005
Fujitsu, a Local Service Provider, announces that it is replacing software vendor IDX with Cerner.

November 2005
Granger slams suppliers for mounting project delays. Projected costs are now at 10 billion pounds and ballooning.

March 2006
Accenture takes a $450 million loss on its NHS contract.

July 2006
CSC I.T. failure leaves 80 trusts without computer service.

August 2006
ISoft announces loss of 382 million pounds; Accenture and CSC conclude there is no believable plan for Lorenzo delivery.

September 2006
Accenture pulls out of national program; CSC takes over its contract.