The Impact of Technology Insertion on Organisations

HFIDTC/2/12.2.1/1
Version 3 / 21 November 2007
• <strong>The</strong> role <strong>of</strong> the DoH was to develop and advise on strategic and policy issues and
the performance <strong>of</strong> major tasks. <strong>The</strong>refore RISP should have been recognised as a
high- risk project. It was left to a health authority with no previous experience <strong>of</strong>
such projects. Most <strong>of</strong> the responsibility for technology procurement, project
management and budgeting was left firmly on the WRHA’s shoulders;
• Risk was further exacerbated by the WRHA’s lack <strong>of</strong> consideration <strong>of</strong> qualitative
measures such as experience, past performance and reputation, when awarding their
contracts;
• <strong>The</strong>re were serious conflicts <strong>of</strong> interest at a senior level within the authority and it
was not clear whether those suppliers recruited for the RISP project were the best
available: ‘A Member <strong>of</strong> WRHA who was also a Director <strong>of</strong> IBM, promoted the
Andersen Consulting bid.’ This was because the Andersen Consulting bid involved
the procurement <strong>of</strong> IBM s<strong>of</strong>tware and terminals. <strong>The</strong> appointed auditor for RISP
found no evidence that the region had undertaken a full evaluation <strong>of</strong> the alternative
suppliers.
9.2.2 London Ambulance Service Computer Aided Despatch
<strong>The</strong> main objective <strong>of</strong> the London Ambulance Service Computer Aided Despatch
(LASCAD) project was to automate many <strong>of</strong> the human-intensive processes <strong>of</strong> manual
despatch systems associated with ambulance services in the UK. In the 1990’s the
London Ambulance Service (LAS) invested considerable money in order to implement an
effective Computer Aided Despatch (CAD) project.
LAS scrapped a development by IAL (BT subsidiary) at a cost <strong>of</strong> £7.5 million in October
1990. In June 1991, they signed a £1.1 million contract with Systems Options to provide
a CAD system. This attempt failed in 1992.
<strong>The</strong> system replaced a manual system for taking emergency calls and allocating resources
to incidents. It relied on automatic vehicle tracking and ambulance crews reporting the
status <strong>of</strong> the call using Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) to allocate resources to incidents.
On the night <strong>of</strong> Monday 26th October to the morning <strong>of</strong> Tuesday 27th October 1992
things started to go wrong at the HQ <strong>of</strong> LAS. It was reported that a flood <strong>of</strong> 999 calls
(some 2900 instead <strong>of</strong> the usual 2300) apparently swamped operators’ screens. Many
recorded calls were being wiped <strong>of</strong>f screens. This, in turn, caused a mass <strong>of</strong> automatic
alerts to be generated indicating that calls to ambulances had not been acknowledged.
<strong>The</strong> report <strong>of</strong> the public inquiry portrays a more complex picture <strong>of</strong> the so-called
technical problems experienced by the LASCAD system than that reported either in the
computing or general press. It is interesting that they conclude: ‘On 26th and 27th
October the computer system did not fail in a technical sense. Response times did on
occasions become unacceptable, but overall the system did what it had been designed to
do. However, much <strong>of</strong> the design had fatal flaws that would, and did, cumulatively lead
to all <strong>of</strong> the symptoms <strong>of</strong> systems failure.’
Various technical and HF issues resulted in communication difficulties that meant the
system was <strong>of</strong>ten unaware <strong>of</strong> the location and status <strong>of</strong> resources. <strong>The</strong> result <strong>of</strong> this was
that the system sometimes made incorrect allocations by:
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