ABSTRACT
Understanding the dynamics of the role of Information systems (IT) in the modernisation of healthcare is enlightened by a focus on the development of the world's largest civil IT programme in the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS). The National Programme for Information Management (NPfIT) developing within the NHS is part of what began in 1999 as a UK strategy to modernise government through innovation and the use of information technology. The political language of the UK government has changed since its election in 1997, moving from modernisation to transformation, reflecting perhaps an increasing urgency for achievement by the Labour administration in particular areas. The introduction of electronic patient records was for a long time bedevilled by policy, professional and ethical issues that often failed to remain faithful to patient interests. Innovation is, as the Minnesota longitudinal studies of technology found, neither sequential nor orderly, but is best characterised as a nonlinear dynamic system.
