NHS England

See the following -

NHS Eyes Open Source Alternatives

Jon Hoeksma | ehealth insider (ehi) | June 27, 2013

...The idea of Anglicising VistA is said to be strongly advocated by some within the leadership of NHS England, including chief data officer Dr Geraint Lewis, who first championed the concept while at the Nuffield Trust think-tank. EHI understands that NHS England is drawing up plans to commit millions, possibly tens of millions, of pounds from the £260m technology fund to funding open source software, potentially including an NHS version of VistA... Read More »

NHS Needs Single Point of Access for Data

Lis Evenstad | Computer Weekly | February 24, 2017

The Open data in the health sector report, which was commissioned by NHS England in 2016, has found that healthcare data is often fragmented and duplicated. The report by Giuseppe Sollazzo in collaboration with Open Health Care UK, which looked at “the needs and experiences of people using open data about health”, said the healthcare sector should establish a single point of access to datasets to get rid of the duplication and varying standards...

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NHS Open Source Movement Gathers Pace As Trusts Set Up CIC [UK]

Edward Qualtrough | CIO UK | February 9, 2015

An NHS open source community interest company (CIC) has been set up to guide the development of an electronic patient record system, which NHS England hopes will ignite the open source digital health and care services markets to better serve clinicians and patients. Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust formally signed an agreement in December 2014 to become the initial members of the new organisation acting as custodians for source code of the openMAXIMS EPR suite, which was released as open source in June 2014. Last week the CIC received approved establishment from Companies House.

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NHS Swindells Urges Vendors to Take Open Approach to Data

Claire Read | Digital Health | September 12, 2017

In his keynote address to the 2017 Health and Care Innovation Expo, Matthew Swindells said software providers should “not be protective about ‘your’ data – the data belongs to the patient”. He continued: “If the patient wants you to share what you’ve got with another clinician who’s treating them, I don’t want to see vendors locking the data down, and I don’t want to see hospitals treating patient data as if it were some sort of market opportunity.”...

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Open Data Institute: Over £40m Value Unlocked Worldwide

The Open Data Institute (ODI) has announced that the total value it has helped unlock to the open data ecosystem has exceeded £40m in the three years since it opened. This includes direct income, grants and competition funding, incubated ODI Startup income and the ODI Node franchise network. Also today, the company confirmed that five new startup businesses, and four new franchise nodes will join and that its membership programme has topped 350 participants, including the Co-op and Ocado.

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Open Letter to Chuck Hagel: DoD still doesn’t know what the hell they are doing

...I fear that you are paving a road to a hellish destination.  Rather than lifting up the VA eligibility problem to a shiny new common information system, you are on the verge of dragging health IT into the same bureaucratic vortex that has already done so much damage in the past.  AHLTA was declared “intolerable” in a Congressional hearing 4 years ago.... Read More »

Open Source Electronic Patient Record Software Released to NHS

Press Release | IMS MAXIMS | June 11, 2014

IMS MAXIMS has released the open source code for its full MAXIMS suite including its electronic patient record (EPR) and patient administration system (PAS) free of charge to the NHS. The release of the openMAXIMS code, which can now be downloaded from the IMS MAXIMS website and shortly via GitHub, marks a substantial step in providing NHS organisations with the opportunity to access software and tailor it to the needs of clinicians and other healthcare professionals. Read More »

Open Source Enlightenment Needed to End 'Dark Ages' of Health IT

Tony Shannon | Digital Health | January 11, 2017

Your article - "Whatever happened to Open Source in 2016?" highlights the brief vogue that open source recently enjoyed in the NHS – 2014-15 – and now seems to have lost. It raises some good questions and important issues, though I sense some broader perspective may be worth adding here. It’s worth remembering that healthcare is a well-established science – the first medical school established in the 9th century.  While information technology is still a young science – the first MSc in software engineering dates from 1979...

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Open Source Software Foundation Implements suiteCRM to Support Code4Health

Press Release | Open Source Software Foundation | October 15, 2015

NHS finances are under intense pressure and demand for services is rising. Something has to give and business as usual is not an option. NHS England recognised this when it supported the establishment of Code4Health, an initiative that stimulates and supports IT innovation in healthcare. One of outcomes of the initiative was to establish an open source (OS) practice, reaching out to an increasing number of open source projects, providing software suitable for use across UK health and care. Read More »

Open Source Software Is Transforming Healthcare

In the summer of 2022, the UK government and NHS England published its Open Source Policy, stating that open source technology is: Particularly suitable for use within the healthcare industry where, through active collaboration between IT suppliers and user/clinicians communities, solutions can be honed to maximise benefits to delivery of health and social care. The public statement by NHS England is just the latest development in a broader trend: The wholehearted embrace of open source software by the healthcare sector. And no wonder; open source presents myriad opportunities for this most complex of industries, with potential solutions across various sub-sectors. Yes, open source is now powering everything from medical wearables to healthcare human resource management.

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Open Source To Be Big Tech Fund 2 Winner (UK)

Jon Hoeksma | eHealth Insider | January 25, 2015

Open source projects will likely be the stand-out winners of NHS England’s tech fund 2 awards, EHI News has learned. Projects based on use of open source clinical software are expected to be largely spared the axe that has been wielded on other projects, after an estimated £90 million was slashed from the £240 million Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund according to EHI News sources.

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openEHR: A Game Changer Comes of Age

I’ve been watching openEHR over more than fifteen years and have always been impressed by its potential to enable us to do things differently, but it’s been a slow burn, with limited take up, particularly in the United Kingdom (UK) where it was invented. However, recent developments mean that I think this is about to change and that openEHR is going to take off in a big way which is going to revolutionize how we think about and do digital health and increase the speed at which we can do it by at least two orders of magnitude. Why do I say this and what evidence is there to support my assertion?

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openMAXIMS CIC Founded as NHS Open Source Movement Gathers Pace

Press Release | IMS MAXIMS | February 5, 2015

The NHS’ open source movement has reached a major milestone with the official launch of the openMAXIMS community interest company (CIC). This will guide the development of an open source electronic patient record system for the NHS. Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust formally signed an agreement on 18th December 2014 to become the initial members of the new organisation and have today received approved establishment from Companies House.

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OSEHRA 2016: Marand to present on Postmodern EHRs at Open Source Summit

Press Release | Marand | June 27, 2016

Tomaž Gornik, CEO of Marand, will speak at OSEHRA Open Source Summit in Washington DC, the largest annual event in open source health-technologies in the USA. Openness and agility are at the core of Postmodern EHRs. The term “Postmodern” was launched recently by Gartner when describing the ongoing evolution of ERP systems moving from monolithic towards modular systems. Tomaž Gornik applied this concept to EHRs in a series of blog posts and recent presentations at different events around the globe (see blog posts, list of events).

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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 »