NHS Spine

See the following -

NHS Delays e-Referral Service Launch Until 2015

Charlotte Jee | ComputerWorld UK | October 6, 2014

The launch of the new NHS e-Referral service has been delayed until spring 2015, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has announced...

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Overview of Open Source and VistA in the UK's NHS

There is much widely publicised interest from NHS England in encouraging the development and implementation of open-source software in the National Health System (NHS) with the debate raging in a number of forums, notably on EHI where this article and the comments it has generated are vital reading for anyone interested in this issue. This debate has been fueled by the availability of NHS England’s £260 million Technology Fund which is actively soliciting open source projects include bids to implement an NHS VistA... Read More »

The Transition From Spine To Spine 2 - A Success Story Or Yet Another NHS IT Failure?

Sooraj Shah | Computing | September 17, 2014

Since the winding down of what had been described by MPs as the “worst and most expensive contracting fiasco in the history of the public sector”, the National Programme of IT (NPfIT), little has been left for the NHS to savour.  That is aside from NHS’s Spine, the part of the national infrastructure that stores patient information and enables electronic messaging...

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Ubuntu 'Weaponised' to Cure NHS of Its Addiction to Microsoft Windows

Maxwell Cooter | The Register | June 30, 2017

A quiet revolution has been rumbling in Leeds, in the north of England. It may not seem revolutionary: a gathering of software developers is scarcely going to get people taking to the barricades in these uncertain times, but the results of this particular meetup could shape access to NHS PCs in the coming years...

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UK NHS Delivers Ambitious Health IT Project - Believed to be the Biggest of its Kind

Press Release | HSCIC | February 17, 2016

HSCIC has just completed an ambitious 18 month transition project to entirely rebuild and redevelop the Spine on Open Source software and to move it to in-house management. This was achieved without disrupting the service it provides to 28,000 organisations and enabled the secure transfer of almost 150TB of data, including the demographic details of 80m people. The new Spine is believed to be the biggest public sector IT system to be built entirely on Open Source software, making it easier for developers to work with. It is managed from the Health and Social Care Information Centre's headquarters in Leeds.

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UK's HSCIC Wraps Up NHS Open Source Spine Transition

Mark Say | UKAuthority.com | February 18, 2016

Work on moving the NHS Spine to in-house management and redeveloping it to run on open source software has been completed, following an 18 month transition project run by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The organisation said it believes the Spine, which provides the technological backbone for connections between clinicians and service providers in NHS England, is now the largest public sector IT system to be built entirely on open source, and this will make it easier for developers to work with.

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