Hacker News Reader

Britain is far worse than the USA -- your health care system just flushed $18 billion down the loo on a massively failed IT system.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...

View on HN

A closer reading reveals that 11 billion (I assume that's thousand million) pounds was the projected cost at the time for completion of the system. "Only" 2.7 billion, or 4.3 billion USD, has been spent, although I don't know if there are contract terminations of serious size to be paid.

Still, it's an epic failure, said to be the greatest single one in government IT contracting.

(E.g. I'll bet the FAA's eternal quest to upgrade from their 1940's (sic) technique and '60s or so architecture has cost more over time, but not any single failed effort.)

Yea we get stuff wrong too. That was a massive balls up, but well before the time of the GDS team.

Also note that the NHS system was about building a database for every NHS health record across the country; prescription notices, medial history, etc. etc.

I'm not sure it'll even be legal now. HealthCare.gov isn't going nearly as far as that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com