OK, OK, I admit it -- it’s my attempt at an attention-grabbing headline. That said, the swine ‘flu pandemic has put even greater pressure on the world’s healthcare systems. With many – not only in the UK – already stretched to the limit, they are still expected to deal quickly and efficiently with every new bug and threat that comes out of the woodwork.

To meet the tall order of delivering more and more services for less money, public health systems have long been looking to technology as a saviour. In fact, healthcare is earmarked as one of the top IT growth markets globally this year, set to expand to US$88 billion, second only to utilities’ IT spend (source: Gartner 2009).

Given the billions of dollars, pounds, euros and so on being spent on healthcare IT, I was alarmed by the results of a new study by industry analysts Quocirca, which we commissioned on behalf of one of our clients, Anoto, the inventor of Digital Pen and Paper technology.

The independent market study suggests that the health sector often throws technology at problems without fully considering the underlying processes or the needs of clinicians and carers. It reveals that healthcare professionals find the IT they have to use complex and awkward. This is especially true for mobile devices like PDAs.

Respondents highlighted that their devices were prone to damage, difficult to keep clean and hard to write on single-handedly or while standing up. A lack of training was also apparent. Another cause of problems was mobile devices’ vulnerability to theft, loss and breaking. Over a quarter of respondents reported serious faults on a weekly basis and one fifth of equipment needed to be replaced every 12 months.

In spite of this, more than 70 per cent were ‘unsure’ or had ‘no idea’ about the ongoing cost of failures. Not an ideal message at this time of recession! The study suggests that for front line staff like doctors, technology is a supporting tool. When it is more complex than necessary, it can get in the way of effective use. After all, healthcare staff have enough on their plate already – without having to battle with dodgy IT. Not surprisingly IT projects in such circumstances are prone to failure.

It seems that healthcare technology deployments have a tendency to revel in IT wizardry rather than look at the needs of the end users. This may be caused, as the study reveals, because management and the IT department are usually the first to get access to new technologies. And their line of work is very different from frontline clinicians and carers.

A case in point is the sorry state of the UK’s National Programme for IT, once touted as the largest civil IT initiative in the world. Not a day passes without news that yet another supplier has dropped out and the rollout is years behind schedule. I think Victor Almeida at Smarthealthcare.com very adequately captured this when he said that one of the crucial reasons for the disintegration of the project was its focus on ‘IT’. “Health organisations are looking for innovative applications and solutions to their problems, and not for complex IT technologies, with complicated systems integration, implementation and protocol requirements.”

As ever, healthcare IT is a case of “horses for courses”: a simple requirement like capturing patient data in real-time, for instance, doesn’t require a thoroughbred IT solution. A sturdy, but no less sophisticated, polo pony may do a better job.