Implausible promises: the information revolution in the NHS

Linking the UK Coalition Government's Health and Social Care Act to historical trend to 'outsource' government IT projects to privately owned tech firms and to processes of technologisation in the National Health Service, this article explores both the reality and the rhetoric of the government's purported 'information revolution' in the NHS. It takes issue with a view of technological fixes as being merely at the service of scientific, medical, or political masters, and argues for the importance of considering the role of IT in the marketisation of healthcare in the United Kingdom. Technology influences both the way information is gathered and the nature of what is measured, but these processes are rarely subject to any critical review; and once data has been produced, its reduction of complex processes to arithmetical categories can be forgotten, and decisions more easily made through market practices.