When bad public sector IT can literally lead to death

Poor software design and lack of managerial reporting combined to stop properly informing older women of the need for late in life cancer checkups which led to a possible 270 premature deaths from the disease.

The deadly process in 2009 and meant NHS patients were somehow believed by a NHS IT system that they no longer needed their three year breast cancer scan at 70, as that had been set improperly as their cut off point – meaning hundreds of thousands of women didn’t get invited for their final screen between their 68th and 71st birthdays.

The admission was made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt, in the House of Commons yesterday, and only came to light by an upgrade to ancient Public Health England systems.

Hunt told MPs that between 135 and 270 women “may have had their lives shortened as a result” of them not receiving reminders  that should have been sent out automatically but weren’t.

He went on to state that statistical modelling suggested there were “likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if this had not happened”, before announcing the opening of an independent inquiry to see what went wrong.

Public Health England is the body responsible for cancer screening programmes, and says that up to 309,000 women aged between 70 and 79 will be offered the opportunity for a catch-up NHS breast screening test this year now the error has come to light.

On its website today it admits, “The problem was identified in January 2018 whilst reviewing the progress of the age extension trial (AgeX). It then became apparent that a similar impact has resulted from long term problems with the routine programme as well. In addition, some local services have not invited everyone for a final screen in the 3 years before their 71st birthday.”

Apologising for the error, which it claims is down to a “complex IT problem with the breast screening invitation system”, Dr Jenny Harries, PHE Deputy Medical Director, says, “We have carried out urgent work to identify the problem and have fixed it [and] dditional failsafe systems have been introduced to ensure the problem does not reoccur.”