Camden News: Royal Free | Computer

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

Camden News - by TOM FOOT
Published: 25 September 2008

Computer chaos at the Royal Free

COMPUTER chaos returned to the Royal Free on Thursday after the Hamsptead hospital’s IT system crashed again – this time for 12 hours.
Furious patients were unable to book appointments between midnight and noon on Thursday and relatives were unable to find where their loved ones were being treated.
A hospital insider told the New Journal: “It has gone beyond a joke now – it was absolute chaos.”
Computer experts from BT, which is piloting the Cerner system in the Royal Free, worked through the night to fix it.
The hospital’s chief executive was warned in a board meeting last month that £300,000 had already been spent from the hospital’s funds following a series of crashes since it was introduced on June 17.
A hospital spokeswoman said: “As we have repeatedly pointed out, there are bound to be issues when installing a first of type system.”

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment: