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!
Linux is an 'open-source' system for running computers invented by a young Finnish student in 1991 and refined by thousands of programmers working together across the internet.
how long until they stop seeing it necessary to give linux a definition? i kinda wonder why they feel like 'quoting' open-source in this too, do they think they're lying? =D
My other sig is an import.
They will be un-assimilated
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.
The National Health Service, Britain's biggest employer, is considering ditching Microsoft software after a row over mounting licensing costs.
What's the chance that MS will be offering them a heavily discounted plan after this.
I might be a little cynical but could it just be the NHS trying to get a better deal from MS?
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..."
Sun seem to have done the right thing, at the right time. I assume the Java Desktop thingo doesnt have huge licence fees, because then there would be no point in people using it, if their sole reason was to get away from Microsoft!
:)
Good on Sun! Someone had to do it, and really, who else could have pulled it off? And dont say Apple
Great, Grand, Wonderful... Everybody on the BUS!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Maybe they get the same answer as people get right now who want to use Linux instead of Windows at work:
:)
"Tough shit, pal."
If they are concerned about interoperability between work and home, OpenOffice runs great on Linux *and* Windows, y'know.
The Free desktop that Just Works
"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..."
Right, unlike our capitalist system of HMOs, and we all know that HMOs are about Choice, Choice, and more Choice, not to mention great service and care for clients. Thank god for Freedom!
The Free desktop that Just Works
As much as I like Linux, the front end needs to mature a bit before going into such a high risk environment where, most of the time, every second is a matter of life and death.
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.
The doctors don't use Windows, their secretaries do. In fact, several of the doctors whom I typed for used Macs whenever they could, using the Windows box only when they needed to get patient information from the network.
When I worked there most of my work was word processing (Word 97), email (GroupWise...wise my ass) and accessing online patient records through a terminal. All of this can be done on any platform, except I suspect that few of them crash as consistently and spectacularly (sp?) as a Windows 95 installation.
I am sure that there are specific, necessary programs in use that are Windows-based, but I am also sure that it would not be the first time that they had to write new software for their special requirements (the aforementioned ICSIS (sp) program for checking patient info, for example)
He called me complaining that I should have tried harder to convince him to switch away from Windows.
..........FULL STOP.
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 story was supposed to read:
;-)
"British Health System Looks at Linux; Tells it to Quit Smoking and Exercise More"
Of the doctors in my hospital who know what an OS is, Linux gets a mention more often than not as a preferred platform.
Most people here run basic MS Office apps (and usually run them basically) and connect to legacy databases using terminals. Some people make their own Access databases but the IT people really hate that - you know how it goes: individual makes DB in Access, time passes, undocumented and poorly implemented Access database becomes the lynchpin of a Ward, originator leave, everyone's up shit creek.
We are migrating from '95 to XP and everyone is getting lots of training. This training could just as easily have been applied to Linus apps.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
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
The last thing you want is an obese penguin giving you health advice.
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.
Actually it's not Windows that I am locked into at work, it's Office.
I have yet to find a way to get past Exchange and Citrix effectively. We looked at a few solutions that cames close, but the administration costs FAR outweighed the licensing savings (although Citrix licenses are astronomical). The other problem is that our document management system (necessary by law due to Sarbanes-Oxley Act) is iManage which only works with office and costs $75K.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
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 wonder what Clippy would think about them considering Linux. When they try to delete him, we might try to shut down the ICU just to remind 3v3ry1 that bi11 0wnz j00.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
It is impossible to remove all of the Windows boxes and replace them with Linux Desktops and Open Office, but it may start some standardisation in an outfit that has every Windows OS from MSDos 6.2 to Windows XP (including a lot of stops along the way, 3.1 and ME).
For those using machines that do not require Windows, I see no problem in switching to a Linux Desktop. Or site uses Novell as well for the backend, so Linux is definitely in our future.
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
Wait a second, they're turning to Sun to save money? *Scratches head*
I'm being pedantic, but the British NHS is not only Britain's biggest employer, it's Europe's biggest employer too.
My parents are both currently working in the NHS, my Dad's a consultant at the local hospital, whereas my Mum's a GP.
The way that they use computers (mainly for work) is fairly simple. My Dad will use some form of presentation building software - for preparing talks at meetings, a web browser - for filling in his "education" points list, and a word processor - for writing letters. That's it - for work both at home and at the hospital where he works. I've found that once the computer has Linux installed on it, he's got no real problems (using GNOME as a Window Manager) doing this tasks. He likes StarOffice Impress, and he's commented that Galeon is faster than Internet Explorer.
My Mum, is generally the same, she needs a scanner - for preparing practice booklets, or information leaflets, a word processor, an email client, and that's about it. At work, she says, I just "put in my password, click OK, and then click on the program icon". Now, that's not something that'd be hard to implement on Linux. Also, being part of a General Practice, they have to purchase their own computers, and software. She has commented before on the cost of the software, and how it seems to be "paying a lot for not very much".
My thoughts? Can Linux be implemented as a desktop implementation for users? Definitely. The user does not need to install software, or hardware for that matter - they cannot at the moment, as they're not "administrators" on their own machines.
Remote management would be easier, IMHO, and there'd be less problems with network floods due to virii that inevitably end up on the Windows systems.
The Police in our area, West Yorkshire, UK, have already made the switch and are running their systems on Linux. This, to me, is an indicator of how Linux, when properly implemented, can be used on the desktop. If the NHS do come up with a decent solution, I'd imagine they'll see the benefits (probably mainly cost benefits).
This post is based purely on personal experience
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.
This certainly occurs, and I have been guilty myself, but it only happens because the IT people are so useless.
I would say that they are overworked, but they're not, they are just incompetent. (this is partly because health in the UK has yet to recognise IT as a core business skill, and pay accordingly)
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
This is pure dealing with Microsoft, there is not a hope that Linux will be generally taken on.
And Microsoft will recognise that too.
If they had wanted to take it seriously, they would have required Linux solutions when they put out the original tender in April. They didn't.
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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hopefully moving to Linux will help combat the problems various NHS trusts had with recent computer virus attacks - I know of one Trust where for weeks access to online medical records was only possible for a short amount of time every day.. makes one wonder how big the human cost of computer viruses is..
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.
"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.
To paraphrase Lewis Black...."Doctor's have the power because they often carry a rectal thermometer".
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
Many of the patient electronic records information systems are already Unix based (Data General's Unix DG/UX, Solaris, SunOS, Digital Unix/Tru64, SCO UnixWare, HP/UX, and I think we few others I forgot). I use to develop one of the major ones.
When I joined one of the private companies which only provides medical IS software, I wasted a month realising that the Linux based solution I was developing wouldn't be accepted because the NHS Trust wanted a Windows based solution. So I spent a week trying to understand and get actual prices and sources for discounted licenses for Microsoft's server software. A quarter of the budget for this project involving custom software went to Microsoft license fees.
The reason it had to be Windows? A serious systemic lack of resources and skills. Any IT personnel working for the NHS who has enough skills to administer a Unix machine (or has actually completed their MCSE exams even) ends up taking a better paying job elsewhere. So the NHS Trusts end up relying on untrained IT staff and nurses who have moved into IT to get away from shift work. Nevermind the fact there was a 2 to 1 ratio of managers to tehnical staff (yes, 2 managers, 1 system administrator).
I have never seen such a screwed up system on such a large scale before. It is almost impressive just how broken the NHS IA / IT is.
True for many, particularly the young and the healthy, and for normal sorts of care. However, there are chronic conditions that very few individuals can pay for. The drug bill alone for treating some chronic conditions exceeds $60,000 per year. The median income for a family of four in the US is about $55,000. That family CANNOT pay for the health care for that child. It is not uncommon for an elderly person to run up $500,000 in health care costs during the last two or three years of their life. Few have that kind of resources available.
TTBOMK, there are no private charities whose purpose is to pay that type of large bill for anyone who is in need. In general, all of the programs that do so involve some degree of coercion. For Medicare and Medicaid, the government pays out of its tax base. In employer-provided insurance plans, the young and healthy pay more than their share in premiums to cover the costs of the older and sicker (the coercion in that case looking a bit more like a carrot than a stick -- the company plan provides more coverage than you need, but is "free"). And don't even think about buying private health insurance for your family if you have a child with such a pre-existing condition -- no one is going to sell you a policy at any price. Similarly if you're 93.
I agree that many aspects of the current coverage seem silly. IIRC, this form of "insurance" started with Kaiser during WWII. Among other things, Kaiser built fleets of standardized ships for the US Navy that were at least one of the critical factors in determining who won that war. Anyway, he found that it was cheaper to operate subsidized clinics to take care of workers and their families than to pay the cost of days lost to sickness or injury. In order to compete for workers, other companies had to offer some sort of similar benefit; most of them did it through private doctors and hospitals; at some point, insurance companies got involved in administering the plans. Such health care arrangements became a standard benefit demanded by the large unions. Keep in mind that health care was a LOT cheaper 60 years ago, so it seemed like a reasonable deal to the companies. Of course, if you're the top management at a company paying the line workers' health insurance premiums, you want the same benefit for yourself.
A system that made some degree of sense 60 years ago has been outstripped by changes in health care technology and society. Conditions that were fatal in the short term then can be treated (at high cost) and people can live for another 30 years. Doctors today come out of medical school owing $100,000 or more, and may face malpractice premiums of $100,000 per year. The US is the richest country in the world, and spends a larger percentage of its GDP on health care than any other industrial nation. At some point, I believe, we'll get this mess straightened out, although things will probably have to get worse before we're willing to take the needed steps.