Introduction. Who I am and what I'll be talking about.

Johnny Hoover works in IT for the NHS. I've been doing this for about the last 20 years, and before that spent a further 10 years doing IT for lots of different businesses right across the UK.

So I've seen a lot of changes. And as most people my age would say, there's a lot of different stuff and yet there's also the same old problems to solve.

I've been moved to start a blog, because I have found Twitter to be an excellent place to gather information, but an appallingly bad place to actually discuss any issues with a proper level of rigour.  Twitter's 140 characters leaves posts as bland sound bites turning the important subjects into trivia.

If I've got an overall philosophy, then it is that successful projects in the NHS:

• have a well defined and manageable scope
• are delivered by a reasonably small group of committed and skilled individuals in the core team
• attract the full backing of both national and local management
• must clearly answer Hopkinson's Question, "How does this improve patient care?"

Great advances are never made by visionaries who think they can change everything in [enter time period until next election] years. It just doesn't happen and the structure of the NHS beast means that it cannot happen. 

Anyway, I've got a lot I want to say about NHS IT, so in the coming months I hope people might find some of what I say interesting. And of course, all the comments and opinions written here will in no way reflect an official position of my employer or any stakeholders on my projects.