Ending 50 years of NHS IT hurt
It was fun to write a piece for Computer Weekly's 50th anniversary on NHS IT from 1966 to the present, but a depressing pattern emerged. One part of the NHS brings in some state-of-the-art computing; most of the rest of the NHS carries on regardless; progress is not, on the whole, made. The National Programme for IT showed that imposing complicated IT systems from the centre tends to fail, but so has letting the local NHS do its own thing.
GP surgeries are the best section of the health service for IT. They had to computerise years ago in order to be paid for work by the government. In the last few months, my local surgery has introduced the option of online booking, repeat prescriptions and access to records, courtesy of its Emis software - several years behind banks and retailers, but welcome nevertheless.
In England GP software is centrally paid-for but locally chosen under the GPSoC deal, a model that seems to work. The equivalent for NHS trusts would be for the Department of Health to require, and fund, a satisfactory level of electronic patient record system but let trusts choose and implement these. But the trusts would have to have adequate IT if they wanted to continue to do NHS work.
As the escalating dispute between health secretary Jeremy Hunt and junior doctors shows (and regardless of your view of Hunt and his plans), it can be hard to change practices across health service. Some trusts have brilliant computing, and that's been the case for decades. The problem is those parts that, for example, appear to see encryption as an optional extra.
Islands of excellence are great; what NHS IT needs is a sea of adequate.
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I read
2.2% of NHS patients in England opt-out of data-sharing, Rebecca McBeth, Digital Health. That's 1.2m people, almost double the previous estimate of 700,000. It includes more than 13% of those covered by NHS Oldham CCG.
How innocent people 'of no security interest' are mere keystrokes away in UK's spy databases, Iain Thomson, The Register. And how spies look up friends' birthdays and addresses on classified systems to send them birthday cards, then take a peak at e-Borders (presumably) to fill in their expenses.
The Register to publish Mindful Sysadmin adult colouring book and German government announces that rugby will be the country's new national sport, both published on the first day of this month. As Gary Lineker almost said, rugby will be a simple game - you play for 80 minutes and then the Germans win from a penalty.
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Map of the month: crime in the West Midlands
This month's map is from an article on Birmingham Eastside, a hyperlocal news site, by Birmingham City University student Sophie Hack where I provided the mapping system. Last month I spent a couple of days working with students on data journalism, and a choropleth map system I've been developing worked well for this story. A choropleth is the kind of map where colours are based on relevant numbers, in this case with brighter colours showing higher crime levels.
This particular map was generated by an Excel spreadsheet that generates HTML and Javascript, with base mapping by Mapbox. I am building a web interface which can create these; if you are interested please get in touch.
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