Viz2XHealth was a business-to-business healthcare IT company based in Dubai, serving major hospitals in the Gulf States. Its system allowed health staff to access and interrogate multiple systems from one, user-friendly interface. But it had a problem.

Everything we have ever done and worked for is about to go up in smoke, explained the service manager.

If we are not able to quickly sort out the problems with the system at one of our main customer hospitals, we could lose a lot of future work.

The problem came to a head when it emerged that one patient, who had a serious but treatable heart condition that could have been cured with simple surgery, had died because of failures in the new system. It should have generated an admissions letter, but did not because the ‘bed state’

on the computer incorrectly showed no free beds.

The patient died while waiting for admission. The hospital told Viz2XHealth that the system clearly did not work, had taken two years to implement instead of the promised six months and had cost significantly more than the original tender. It wanted it fixed, very quickly, at no additional cost, and would sue the company for the payout made to the family of the dead patient.

The Viz2XHealth service manager explained that they had followed all the usual protocols but had hit several problems. The steering group, which was there to oversee and specify the system, was a nightmare to run; people kept being called away and meetings cancelled. Individual members just seemed interested in their own area and nothing else. User groups (whose role was to check the practicality of the proposal) also became resistant, making access to key people and processes difficult. Also, the hospital had requested a change of the system’s specification a month before it went live. Moreover, the hospital’s CEO changed half-way through the project, with the new one wanting to save money.

A Viz2XHealth systems developer commented:

We spent time and effort mapping out all existing processes and identifying user needs. Then, when we checked back with the staff, they knew what they wanted but couldn’t see the benefits of everything being joined up. Then, when they saw an early version of the system they started wanting lots of changes, not to the interface we were developing but to some of their existing systems. That significantly increased costs and extended the implementation.

He concluded, Viz2XHealth has only been going for a few years.

At the start it all seemed relatively straightforward.

We would put in an interface system and people seemed to be grateful. Now we put in the system and they expect us to solve all their other problems for the same cost. We then get into a vicious spiral of increasing demands, greater complexity, escalating costs, more problems and more complaints.

(a) How should Viz2XHealth respond to the problems with the hospital?

(b) What should Viz2XHealth do to avoid this type of problem?