Slashdot Mirror
British Health System Looks at Linux
DanBrusca writes "The Observer is reporting that Britain's biggest employer, the National Health Service, may ditch Microsoft due to mounting licence costs. 'Richard Granger, NHS IT director, has ordered a trial of a Linux-based system from Sun Microsystems as part of a UKP2.3 billion computer modernisation plan. The plan could see Java Desktop software rolled out across the NHS's 1 million staff and 800,000 computers to replace Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite of programmes.'"
now the british health system... it's amazing how the same operating system that cio's thought of as a science project a year ago can get the big contracts with nothing more than a respectable corporate name on the outside of the box.
2 1337 4 u!
Charles Andrews, Sun Microsystem's public sector head, said licence cost savings would come to tens of millions of pounds directly. 'And we won't force people to upgrade computers and technology on a 2-3 year cycle either. Customers can upgrade when they need to,' he said.
Not a troll, but Linux is immune from upgrades? This is not the way to convince people to use Linux, by implying that once you install/download Linux, you can walk away without any more upgrades. I wish he had been more clear about the costs involved instead of being so vague.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
How many Slashdotters would prefer Linux, but have to use Windows at work ?
It's not up to the employers most of the time to decide. My guess is nothing happens unless they have a radical view at things and threaten quit quit if they have to switch.
Everyone in the world seems to be evaluating Linux on the desktop. And why not? It makes perfect sense. At most, you get a viable alternative to Microsoft; at worst, you get discounts from Microsoft.
Well, let me correct that. Everyone in the world but in the United States. Why is it that the US companies and organizations (starting with the ^$!* Universities!) are the only ones blind to the potential of FOSS (and the interaction between FOSS and a RAIS (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Students) hacking on it!), or at least to the fact that Microsoft will give them a discount if they at least look at the competition?
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
since when do end users get a say in their operating system? the doctors have the exact same amount of choice with the linux system that they had with the windows system: zero.
2 1337 4 u!
And you know what? It looks as though it's working. Getting their desktop act together combined with StarOffice and excellent support may help Sun out of it's doldrums after all.
I have to admit that I wasn't sold on the 'Java' desktop (whatever), but it seems that they are pushing the right buttons here.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The problem is, most people dont yet understand the diffrence between a monitor and a computer, so why should they understand the diffrence between operating systems? Linux still has never gotten mass media coverage in any real way. Until the 6'oclock news or the NY Times frontpage have in depth coverage of the fact that other operating systems exist, the average person, even the average high income person, will not understand that Linux is a (generally) better proposition than windows or that it is even another proposition.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
"Just wait until X starts crashing on them and they can't get their plug'n play scanner working..." Blah, Blah, Blah.
Hmmm.. Installing software or hardware in this sort of environment shouldn't be left to users in the first place. If YOU don't know what you're doing that's your own problem.
I know plenty of doctors offices locally either using Unix-based apps under Windows (which really sucks), or are still using DOS-based ones (Wow, pick your poison). Please keep in mind that a national healthcare network shouldn't have to worry about whether or not it can play Half-Life 2.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Linux Desktop System would be more accurate. Don't you think ? Don't forget . Sun is payrolling SCO by paying that IP license and has always distrusted linux. Ripping the nametag Linux off the OS software and replacing it with a Java title is something a greedy company would do.
You are 100% correct. However the life and death machines have never run Windows or Linux, and almost certainly never will. They are very strictly the domain of Real Time Operating Systems and embedded systems. (QNX comes to mind, but I'm not 100% sure if it's ever been used in medical equipment).
The rollout will be for generic office type machines, noting lab results, appointments, taking notes, rosters, and that hundred and one other, non-life-and-death uses.
If anything I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often. The license savings on 800,000 machines should come to a number that you have to an idiot to not seriously look into.
/IBM commercial on TV today. Not there standard E-server commercials, but just on the merits of Linux.
Where as the license savings on the 20 machines at work comes to a small enough amount we don't decide it's worth porting the one program we require on windows so we don't think about it much. We also however don't upgrade very often, 10 95's 5 98's and a few others just for testing purposes.
Now having said this, we're moving our product to linux, partially for the higher margins we can get when we don't have to pay license fees on the servers we sell and partially because the old OS is expensive garbage that should have been retired 10 years ago. The massive number of free tools helps with the move, and the advertising push people like IBM have been doing really helps with the customers and the boss. I actually saw my first Linux
The workplace is definitely changing and it's not at all like I guessed it would be 10 years ago when I started school.
They learn and adapt to use the tools provided?
I understand where you're coming from, friend - not wanting to take anyone's freedom away. However, a doctor's function is to heal patients, not architect Information Systems. As long as the systems put in place provide him with the information he or she needs, in the form needed when it is needed, there should be no problem at all, after the initial learning curve.
As an IT professional, I know how to heal a sick computer, but for sick humans I refer them to a more much more qualified professional - a Doctor. The reverse should also be true.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The UK government spends millions on institutions like universities allowing them to research and develop all sorts of free software, ranging from kernel security features (StegFS, Cambridge) to userspace applications like text-to-speech (Festival TTS, Edinburgh) and VoIP (VIC, UCL). It only makes sense that they should reap the benefits. Why pay twice for something?
You do realize that Britain's health system is socialist don't you? Under socialism, you take what is given to you.
Oh My God. A health system where you will be treated regardless, where you can get a heart bypass, a kidney transplant, cancer therapy or IVF treatment without someone first asking for your health insurance details or your credit card number and you choose to dismiss it because it's egalitarian?
I'm sorry, but I think a government has a few basic responsibilities towards its citizens. Making sure that it does its best to keep them all in good health by providing them all with decent medical care regardless of their ability to pay or their social standing is a good thing.
A sick child that needs a vital operation is a sick child that needs a vital operation. Whether or not her parents can afford to pay for whatever it takes to make her well again should not factor into the equation.
If this is what you decry as "socialist" then give me a "socialist" society any day of the week.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Select one of the choices below:
1. They threaten Microsoft and get their deep discount. Smart.
2. They buy into Sun and pay dearly for support as well as for rewriting all of their already working software. Stupid.
Somehow I think the entire point of this "switch" is to do #1.
My wife works for the NHS here in London. We dual-boot here and she finds linux too difficult. She's OK to read email and the like but installation of hardware or software is just too difficult under linux for your average NHS worker (not that they're stupid, they just know about other things).
I see it in every linux debate I read - this will only succeed when linux becomes easier to use. No more editing obscure text files or reading howto's. Things just have "to work" before people will change
(OK, things don't always "just work" in MS, but mostly it does and people need some incentive to sell them on a change like that).
It seems that NHS is looking at *Sun* and their tech support and not Linux.
As others have pointed out this isn't a victory for Linux...Sun isn't exactly the biggest fan of penguin branded OS and kernels. Heck they don't even call it Linux.
I might be a little cynical but could it just be the NHS trying to get a better deal from MS?
And why the hell wouldn't they? That's one of the reasons I've gotten into FOSS - I want a big stick with which to beat Microsoft into submission with.
It's called competition, friend. Every time someone uses FOSS to get deep discounts on Windows and/or Office, it takes just a little more steam out of the Microsoft steamroller. I hate to wish ill on anyone, but this is good for the IT industry, IMHO.
It also makes a business case for evaluating FOSS, putting it into the minds (if not the hearts) of the PHBs. It will become a more common thing to have Linux installs, which will cause Microsoft's customers to make them conform to standards that everyone can live with.
All around, there is no downside here. Your cynicism is born from impatience, of wanting FOSS to win NOW. Patience, friend, and keep a clear head - intelligence, not emotion, is what we need to use in order to restore innovation and freedom to the industry.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
This is great. Linux has gone from a university project in a country which has never had an empire to moving in on the largest software company in the world, all within a little over ten years. This is awesome achievement. Here on /. we spend a lot of time griping about not being able to cut and paste between KDE and Gnome apps, and complaining about the fact that the latest wireless card doesn't have a driver in Debian Unstable, etc, but let's take a moment to think about how awesome this is, thank those who made it happen (Linus and a cast of millions) and also think about what we are doing as part of it. Writing a new device driver? Helping a friend set it up? Or posting as AC on /.? Whatever it is, we have to give back to it somehow.
I would be willing to bet that you are not far off on that point. It costs a fare amount for a large organisation like that to move from one application to another let alone a whole OS. You have to consider all the retraining of stuff + installition cost etc.. I would be willing to bet that 50-60% of the big corporations that have treaten to go to linux have just done so to screw a better deal of MS
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
Lemme guess...
-It's an entire system involving servers and backend software, not just the desktops
-They get the hardware and support in the same package
-Sun's distro is customised for standardised desktops, easy roll-out and maintenance unlike regular distros
-They get a company who they can pin problems on
-They already know and trust Sun, since it provides their current server hardware
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
MRSA is a problem precisely becsuse of the sterility in a hospital. Hospitals word wide have this problem.
Now the above sounds crazy, sterile environment causes problems. But think about evolution, in a normal environment these resistant germs might not be prevalent because they cannot compete with other germs. But if something removes the other germs then voila MRSA. They have nothing controling their spread.
When I lived in the UK I viewed the BBC as very biased, the education system as decrepid and the NHS out of control.
Now I live in the US I see the BBC as the paragon of unabised reporting, the UK public education system as an ideal and the NHS as a very vital piece of public infrastructure.
Where is the US liberal media I read so much about? Why does a country that prides education so much have a high illiteracy rate? You have many doctors but hardly any public healthcare.
In short, it's better to have a large unwiedly public healthcare system than not have one at all.
Having to work alongside NHS IT Support, I would have to say it's rather unlikely that there will be a mass migration to Linux. Firstly, they are still moving onto Win2K and many machines are on 95/98 ( a) they won't ditch years of work even for savings and b) to do so would be to admit that they made a costly error). Secondly, do you know how hard it is to get hold of medical staff in the first place? It's unfeasible to just walk in and upgrade them to a completely different system; the support calls will go through the roof. The staff will need to be kept in the 'loop' during the whole process. Finally, the 'culture' of the users in the NHS is that they are pretty resistant to change, even upgrading their browser from IE5 to 6 can take weeks! Some are still using Eudora 3.0!
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Whilst they may be looking at using Linux, to move the whole organisation across (remember that it's the second largest non-military employer in the world) will take years, if not a decade. That's a lot of time for outside interests to derail the whole process.
But the paradox here is that Netscape's achilles heel was that Microsoft could afford to give away a product that was competing with their main revenue source, forcing them to dramatically rework their business model. In the case of open source, Microsoft is on the receiving end of the same medicine.
"Everyone, and I mean everyone, who has at least rudimentary human intelligence and capability, can pay for their own healthcare."
"No nation, not even the "mighty" US of A has the wealth and willingness to pay for everyone's healthcare yet."
Sounds like a contradiction to me.
I hope you never have a serious, debilitating, long-term illness. If you did, you might, at last, realise the foolishness of the first sentence I quoted.