NHS Eyes Open Source Alternatives

Earlier this month, health secretary Jeremy Hunt and NHS England’s director of patients and information Tim Kelsey were in the US, talking up the NHS as a trailblazer in all things tech and all things open. Along with a plethora of high-powered NHS managers, they were at the Datapolooza conference to say that open data in the NHS is set to be bigger than the internet. Heady stuff.

At the same time, NHS England has been funding visits to the US Veterans Health Administration, to look at its much-admired VistA open source electronic medical record system. The aim of the visits is to see what the NHS can learn from the VA’s experience of open source and, potentially, to investigate whether the English NHS can re-write the system for its own use...

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...