Farewell then NPfIT across the health service. But without learning longer-term lessons, will locally-orientated IT development in the NHS just be going back to the future?

Long a focus of controversy, the NHS’s flagship programme for renewing its information technology has been radically scaled down and ‘re-focused’ by the new coalition government. Jerry Fishenden welcomes the change, but worries that letting diversity bloom again without learning the lessons of both NPfIT and its predecessor policies will not break the mould of past failures.