Pressure on the NHS in England to abandon or radically reform its £13bn (€14bn; $18bn) scheme to computerise all patients’ records reached a new peak this week with the publication of a critical parliamentary report. The Committee of Public Accounts’ second investigation into the NHS national programme for IT says that the health service may never adopt the programme’s core systems for acute hospitals but will end up paying for them anyway.

Although the 7 year old programme has notched up some achievements, risks remain “as serious as ever,” said the committee’s chairman, the Conservative MP Edward Leigh. The committee’s report says that the main point of concern is the installation of electronic records in secondary care. Originally the …