BMJ  2008;336:356-357 (16 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39476.472789.0F

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Personal view, doi: 10.1136/bmj.39484.423391.59

Michael Cross talks to Mike Pringle as he stands down from his role in the NHS information technology programme

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"Three years in the firing line" is how Mike Pringle describes his time leading the world’s largest information technology (IT) programme’s belated attempt to win NHS clinicians’ hearts and minds. As one of seven clinical leads for the NHS in England’s national programme for IT, Pringle, professor of general practice at the University of Nottingham, was the focus of professional opposition to government plans to make patients’ electronic health records accessible throughout the NHS. He has no regrets. Although critical of the way the programme was originally set up, he remains convinced it is the right thing to do.

Sceptics, however, who include both main opposition political parties, are likely to seize on his criticisms in an increasingly charged debate over "big brother" government databases.

Unlike several of the programme’s leading figures, recruited from management consultancies rather than the NHS, Pringle was already known in the healthcare informatics community when . . . [Full text of this article]

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