How the NHS sold its choice

The Register has an indepth article on the implications of the recently signed NHS/Microsoft deal, rumoured to be worth a cool £500 million over 9 years.

Quote:
"The NHS, the "largest procurer of IT services in the world" is now locked into Windows and Microsoft Office for nine years; its IT suppliers, if they wish to remain its IT suppliers, must also lock themselves in, and anyone working with the new NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has effectively had Windows chosen for them.

Hutton and the Department of Health however show little sign of grasping the full consequences of what they're doing. In the Commons Hutton has repeatedly painted a rosy picture of the choice-filled future that the NPfIT will bring, while the program itself is relentlessly concentrating power in the hands of a few chosen suppliers and driving choice out of the system as the network extends, culling the very suppliers that Hutton lists as "approved". The latest example, where choice now comes down to one single supplier, just takes the process to its illogical, unsatisfactory conclusion. For nine years."