News that the Conservative party has commissioned a review of NHS IT policy is welcome. Like it or not, the Tories are increasingly seen as the Government in waiting while Gordon Brown and his Cabinet and ex-Cabinet colleagues conspire to shove prudence back into the cupboard of history.

With a festive period of internecine warfare in the offing on the ruling side of the House, David Cameron has set about seeking learned opinion about how to paint the three-legged, comatose white elephant he may inherit a tactful shade of blue.

This is no root and branch review of the National Programme for IT, however, but it does follow hot on the heels of the Public Accounts Committee's recommendation that NHS IT be thoroughly re-examined. That it is being done by the Opposition is surely an indication that Brown has no wish to generate any more bad news himself.

However, who has Cameron engaged to review how NHS IT will meet patients' needs over the next decade? None other than that venerable and – if I may be so bold – slightly quaint organisation, the British Computer Society, which is to world IT what the British Interplanetary Society is to conquering space (a good egg, a worthy cause, and a noble effort).

The BCS, founded in 1957, a registered charity, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1984, is the qualifying body for chartered IT professionals.

Its aim to be the leading place for IT-related thinking did not extend to buying the bcs.com domain, however, which belongs to the British Cardiovascular Society. Nevertheless, it revels in its .org status.

Above reproach though the BCS may be, the news is depressing for one simple reason: the last organisation that ought to be reviewing what the NHS wants from its IT is a society of IT professionals. Ask the doctors and the NHS trusts and the admin staff and the nurses!

Engineers know how to build things from the ground up and take them apart again, and can tell you how and why everything works (or doesn't) but they don't have to know why they're doing it. Still, at least Cameron is not engaging a vastly expensive consultancy to do the work.

• Richard Granger has moved to Australia.