NHS Must Adopt Open Systems to Address 'Failure' Say Academics

City University's Centre for Health Informatics (CHI) has launched a research programme and policy challenge paper to explore how NHS IT services can be improved and made more cost-effective in the face of "past failure". The challenge paper calls for new NHS systems to be based on a combination of open standards, open source software, open system interfaces and agile development.

The paper states, "The NHS is just emerging from a decade of wasted opportunity in the development of clinical information systems, particularly Electronic Health Records. "The National Programme for IT was a centralised approach to information sharing that has failed on a number of levels. This has delayed the introduction of new systems, weakened the commercial supplier base and disheartened many IT professionals in the service. The NHS needs a fresh approach to clinical IT."