450,000 missed breast tests in UK due to an IT blunder

UP TO 270 women in England may have died prematurely of breast cancer because of an IT failure that led to 450,000 patients missing out on routine screening appointments.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised in parliament for the “serious failure,” which he said was the result of a mistake in a computer system’s algorithm dating back to 2009. He has now ordered a review.

“Our current best estimate, which comes with caveats, is that there may be between 135 and 270 women who had their lives shortened as a result,” he said.

“Tragically, there are likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if the failure had not happened.”

Under the routine National Health Service breast screening programme, women aged between 50 and 70 are invited for tests every three years. About two million women are tested every year.

The IT error affected some 450,000 women aged between 68 and 71, who should have received their final invitation to a test but did not. Of those, around 150,000 have since died.

More than 300,000 of the remaining women, now aged 70 to 79, will be offered catch-up tests by the end of May.

“For them and others it is incredibly upsetting to know that you did not receive an invitation for screening at the correct time and totally devastating to hear you may have lost or be about to lose a loved one because of administrative incompetence,” said Mr Hunt.