Bellamy, who has been in post for six months said, "We often focus on the aspects of the National Programme that are behind schedule. But we need to remind people of our progress.
As I've travelled around the NHS, I have heard many people talking about what things were like before the National Programme. IT was fragmented. Trusts were served by smaller suppliers, which meant ambitions for modernisation were often thwarted. While we still have a long way to go, we have many of the foundations in place for making that modernisation happen."
Previewing a keynote address he will present to the at the end of the month, Bellamy , "In a year's time I believe we will be realising benefits and deploying new systems as a matter of routine. We will be working with NHS organisations in a systematic way so that any deployment of systems is fully prepared for. We will be building a rhythm of delivery."
With the future direction of the NPfIT and after highly publicised difficulties in deploying systems at large hospitals, Bellamy said, The top priority for the next 12 months is to demonstrate that acute systems - Cerner and Lorenzo - can be deployed in large, complex hospital trusts and provide value to patients and clinicians.
We need to be able to show examples of the systems working normally. To achieve this challenging objective, we need to work closely with suppliers and the NHS hospitals which are the earlier adopters. The scale of the challenge is massive and we need excellent team work - pulling together - to get it done.