I spent 8 years working in NHS IT, and... yes... but also... it's complicated - e.g. in one case, it was the only OS which the software that ran the x-ray machine would run on. What was the trust supposed to do? Bin a perfectly good x-ray machine?

Believe me, I b*tched about it - I had to build connectivity to the bloomin' thing to extract data for management reports! Upgrades had been tried, but had all failed, and losing the x-ray machine for a few days to try to fix it was not going to fly.

And multiply that up by the potential numbers of affected machines, the potential numbers of affected people...

"Upgrade fear" is real. "if we upgrade X, what else is going to break?" Bad enough when a bank messes up and none of their customers can access their money for a week, but if the NHS messes up?"Upgrade fear" is real. "if we upgrade X, what else is going to break?" Bad enough when a bank messes up and none of their customers can access their money for a week, but if the NHS messes up?