The BCS HI (Northern) Group arranges an eclectic programme of lectures each year, covering different disciplines with speakers from widely differing backgrounds.

The audiences for meetings are correspondingly varied in terms of both the types of people who attend and the numbers. In this article, Phil Paterson and Tom Sharpe of the group, give an overview of the talked that have related to the National Programme for IT.

The most popular meetings over the last three years have undoubtedly been those related to the National Programme for IT in the NHS, where our speakers have presented very well-informed and interesting talks from a range of different viewpoints.

Not too surprisingly, most speakers on NPfIT ask for confidentiality within the audience, which allows them to air their views and answer questions openly in a non-threatening, neutral, professional environment which benefits the speakers and the questioners in the audience. The downside of this is that we cannot give much post-event publicity to who said what in case their position is compromised as a result.

Conversely, our speakers in the less 'political' areas of health informatics are usually delighted to get extra publicity through vehicles such as Health Informatics Now, which allows us to contribute to the magazine on a regular basis.

In this issue we are focusing on Decision Support in Medicine but, lest we forget, I would like to highlight the fascinating talks we have enjoyed on NPfIT so far in 2006-7.

We started off in October with an irreverent talk from industry expert Phil Sissons on 'Things you didn’t want to know about NPfIT', which examined some of the options and choices - right and wrong - that were made in the early days of the programme.

This was quickly followed in November by Paul Charnley, regional implementation director for the North West and West Midlands cluster, enlightening us on how things are going in our region and how key issues are being addressed.

Moving into 2007, in February we heard all about the PACS success story from Dr Rhidian Bramley, consultant radiologist and national clinical advisor to the PACS Programme and in March we heard the 'clinicians' view' of the national programme from Professor Mike Pringle, a national clinical lead for GPs, with emphasis on the Summary Care Record and clinical governance arrangements.

In between, we had organised a session at the Healthcare Computing 2007 conference in Harrogate at which Jeremy Nettle, the new chair of the Intellect Healthcare Council, presented the IT industry's response to the impact of NPfIT on the market, bringing out some of the issues involved and summarising current progress before reflecting on Intellect's response to the government's Health Select Committee.

The theme that came over was that in the eyes of the suppliers the national programme is maturing and the mood is positive.

By the time Health Informatics Now is printed, we will have had our last NPfIT meeting of the academic year. Andrew Spence, healthcare strategy director at CSC, local service provider (LSP) for three of the five clusters is due to describe how the role of the LSP has evolved over the last three years and how it might continue to evolve in the future, how the LSPs add value and how CSC approaches the delivery and support tasks.

As mentioned previously, we can't go into details of the content of the talks, but the overall message has been pretty upbeat. Whilst there is always going to be a certain amount of positive spin on the delivery of NPfIT, in our opinion the fact that insiders are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and speak openly about the issues involved is significant in itself.

It says a lot more both about the state of the Programme and the relationship between NHS Connecting for Health and the BCS than some of the more negative messages that have been sent out recently.

Where else but the BCS can people get such a breadth of vision of how IT is developing in the NHS and speak without fear or restriction to some of the top movers and shakers who are influencing progress from their different positions? The only way to catch those off-the-record remarks and get the inside story is to come along to our meetings.