The U.K.'s NHS's new IT system is in a state of chaos, an influential group of MPs say.

The Public Accounts Committee is furious at how the Connecting for Health project chose to electronically link every GP's surgery and hospital in England and provide online records for up to 50 million patients has gone tits up.

All hospitals in England and Wales were supposed to have had patient care record systems installed by the end of 2006, yet only 34 out of 169 have received the systems and of these, 21 are of an older, now outdated version. The new versions are costing millions of pounds to install and often have less functionality. NHS trusts report they are having to employ dozens of extra staff to manage their day-to-day business and there have been cases of some trusts losing patients' data.

A Connecting for Health official said the system had 'technical issues which are being resolved.'