TECHNOLOGY, said the physicist CP Snow, is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with the one hand and stabs you in the back with the other.

Even though he wrote it 40 years ago, that still holds true when it comes to big IT installations in the public sector.

Take the new Electronic Patient Record system at hospitals across Oxfordshire, which has spread chaos like a virus among patients and staff since going live this week.

For reasons known only to themselves, hospital bosses decided to fire up the £15.7m system unannounced at the weekend and the consequences have been both costly and hugely disruptive, if the patients and health professionals we have spoken to are to be believed.

If truth be told, this is standard for new computer systems in hospitals, government departments and other areas of the public sector.

The technology is so complex and the installations so huge, that it would be a bigger story if everything went right from the off.

Oxford University Hospitals Trust promises that, once everything settles down, the system will make life easier for everyone in the long term.

In other words, no pain, no gain seems to be the message of the week at the John Radcliffe, Churchill and Horton Hospitals.

Let us hope they are right.