LiNHS

About LiNHS

2010-06-12T15:27:00.003+01:00

About LiNHS

Just to put LiNHS into some kind of order and context, here is a suggested reading order of some of the blogs.

Welcome to the LiNHS Project
LiNHS Concept Day - Initial decisions
LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - General Applications
LiNHS Concept Day - Software Repositories
LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - Support Applications
LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - Clinical Applications
LiNHS Concept Day - Desktop theme and background
LiNHS Concept Day - Default Install of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2
LiNHS Concept Day - Basic Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2 install
LiNHS Concept Day - Creating a basic desktop theme

LiNHS Concept Day - Default Install of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2

2010-04-12T14:26:00.003+01:00

Ubuntu 10.04 like previous versions of Ubuntu have a large array of pre-installed applications.

Most importantly, 10.04 has OpenOffice 3.2 pre-installed

LiNHS Concept Day - Creating a basic desktop theme

2010-04-12T14:17:00.003+01:00

Basic changes to the look and feel.

Panels

Right click on Panel, select Properties

Select Background, Solid Colour, then adjust the transparency to about 45%, repeat for bottom panel

Theme

Right click on the desktop and select Change Desktop Background

Select Themes and then select Clearlooks then close to finish

LiNHS Concept Day - Basic Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2 install

2010-04-12T14:06:00.011+01:00

Starting with a really basics of an install

Install Ubuntu 10.04

United Kingdom Time Zone

Keyboard Layout, UK again

Defaults for the harddisk, only 16 GB

Username lspadmin as in local service provider, the computer name to match national standards and don't forget to scroll down a little

Ready to install

Installing/progress screens

Restart Now

Done in around 20 minutes on a Virtualbox

LiNHS Concept Day - Desktop theme and background

2010-04-12T11:56:00.006+01:00

The look and feel of the desktop should reflect the NHS corporate colours. For example, this image used by a Scottish NHS organisation:

http://www.lanpdc.scot.nhs.uk/.../master13_background.jpg

We also felt that the menu-icon should be the NHS logo, rather than the Ubuntu logo:

LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - Clinical Applications

2010-04-12T11:02:00.009+01:00

List of open source healthcare software
The following is a list of software packages and applications licensed under an open source license or in the public domain for use in the healthcare industry. Software that is freely available, but not licensed under an open source license should be placed in the List of freeware health software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_healthcare_software

We felt that clinical staff should be the ones to contribute and choose the clinical applications from those available. At first look, however, we felt that PatientOS and GnuMed were the lead candidates.

Patient OS
PatientOS (pronounced Patient-oh-es where O and S stand for Open Source) has been designed from the outset to be a Healthcare Information System (HIS). The software architecture, design patterns and framework has been built for the complexities and challenges of an enterprise wide information system. Internationalization and localization are expected, even translation into multi-byte languages such as Japanese.
http://www.patientos.org/

GnuMed
The GNUmed project builds free, liberated open source Electronic Medical Record software in multiple languages to assist and improve longitudinal care (specifically in ambulatory settings, i.e. multi-professional practices and clinics). It is made available at no charge and is capable of running on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It is developed by a handful of medical doctors and programmers from all over the world. It can be useful to anyone documenting the health of patients including, but not limited to, doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, acupuncturists, nurses, psychologists ... Also available via the Ubuntu Software Centre.
http://wiki.gnumed.de/bin/view/Gnumed

The following functionality is identified by Connecting for Health as required for NHS working:

Patient Administration System (PAS)

Order communications and diagnostics reporting
including all pathology and radiology tests and tests ordered in primary care

Discharge Letters with coding
discharge summaries, clinic and Accident and Emergency letters

Resource Scheduling for beds, tests, theatres, etc

E-Prescribing
including medicines for use after non-inpatients

High Resolution Image examination
Ultrasound, X-ray, MRI, etc - Aeskulap DICOM Viewer available from the Ubuntu Software Centre

Clinical Reporting System
able to produce reports from any combination of Clinical Applications

Smartcard
physical card, and authentication software - Open Smart Card Development Platform (OpenSCDP)

The Open Smart Card Development Platform (OpenSCDP) is a collection of tools for the development, test and deployment of smart card applications. It uses the capabilities of Global Platform Scripting, Profile and Messaging technology to provide unparalleled flexibility and development speed.
http://www.openscdp.org/

OpenSC-Project is similar and available through the Ubuntu Repository

http://www.opensc-project.org

LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - Support Applications

2010-04-12T10:32:00.002+01:00

For all support services

Information Technology
Estates and Facilities Management
patient complaints
risk management
etc

For each of those listed above, specific application(s) will be required for the following:

Service Desk
Contracts Management
Purchasing
Stock control
Salaries and Wages
Human Resources

IT Service Desk solutions
http://www.opensourcehelpdesklist.com/
Ideally the final product selected should provide all ITIL v3 functionality within the application.

Helpdesk Reloaded is the closest to what is required within the NHS:

Free Help Desk Software, No cost to you.
Easy to Install with the help desk installation wizard.
Based on PHP and using the free database software MySQL
No programming or database knowledge required. We have built in all the features you need in the help desk's web based GUI.
Updated Frequently we normally release new version every other week.
We are interested in implementing your ideas. If you have a good idea for a feature on the help desk software, let us know. We listen.

Payroll, Human Resources and Enterprise Resource Planning
Postbooks seems to be the lead currently available:
PostBooks is an open source business software package that offers a total solution for managing your business, including fully-integrated accounting, CRM and ERP modules. Designed for businesses looking for an alternative to - or a growth path from - commercial desktop
accounting packages such as Quickbooks and Peachtree, PostBooks rivals sophisticated commercial ERP platforms, offering higher quality at a much lower cost.

PostBooks, like most ERP applications, is organized by functional areas, or modules, described below. These modules are highly interconnected and integrated, but you can customize which modules - even which individual tasks - each of your staff is authorized to use.
http://www.osalt.com/postbooks

LiNHS Concept Day - Software Repositories

2010-04-12T10:10:00.002+01:00

We agreed that there should be a tiered NHS Repository approach which is free and available, and also available via an external mirror site.

The tiering should be

Local Repository visible at the end user desktop
Local Repository backfilled from NHS Repository on the NHS intranet, mirrored on an internet site
NHS Repository backfilled from Ubuntu repository, and other suppliers' repositories

LiNHS Concept Day - Software choices - General Applications

2010-04-12T09:55:00.010+01:00

Office Productivity Suite
We felt that OpenOffice was the logical choice for an office productivity suite, as this provides best document compatibility with the current NHS preferred product (Microsoft Office 2007/2003).

Calendar/Scheduling/Resourcing/Messaging (e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, etc)
Evolution and Empathy are pre-installed on Ubuntu.

Reporting
It was felt that an application to directly connect to data warehouses would be useful, in the mould of Crystal Reports. We initially opted for JasperReports. This is a powerful open source Java reporting tool that has the ability to deliver rich content onto the screen, to the printer or into PDF, HTML, XLS, CSV, XML and even flash (swf) files. It is entirely written in Java and can be used in a variety of Java enabled applications, including J2EE or Web applications, to generate dynamic content. Its main purpose is to help creating page oriented, ready to print documents in a simple and flexible manner.

Project Management
Planner provides project planning and scheduling together with resource management.
http://live.gnome.org/Planner and available via the Ubuntu Software Centre

Image manipulation
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It is also available via the Ubuntu Software Centre.

Terminal Software
Built into Ubuntu

File Transfer, archiving and recovery
Use Nautilus, which is built into Ubuntu.

Web Browser
Firefox , which is built into the current distribution of Ubuntu.

LiNHS Concept Day - Initial decisions

2010-04-12T09:37:00.010+01:00

LiNHS Mission Statement

The provision of healthcare should be supported by infrastructure which is

secure
stable
efficient
effective
easy to use
flexible, to meet the needs of evolving services

Based on this, we initiated the LiNHS project.

Partition size - 16GB initially
for ruggedised laptops, solid drives and bootable USB memory sticks there will be a cost step, hence the decision to initially start with a 16GB partition with the hope that we can keep this down to 8GB in the final build.

Virtual Machine
To ease development and use of Configuration Management principles, we decided to build the image within a SUN Virtualbox.

Linux Distribution selection
We considered various Linux distributions and opted for Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx). This was because of its generally accepted good user experience, and 10.4 is the latest Long Term Support version, which means 3 years support on Ubuntu Desktop (April 2015), and 5 years on Ubuntu Server (April 2017). A new LTS version is usually released every 2 years. 32 bit and 64 bit versions of this distro are available.

Software Choices
Building on research prior to the Concept Day:
http://www.kynson.org.uk/penguin/healthcare.htm
We considered the software options for each software requirement.

Tools : Open Smart Card Development Platform

2010-02-15T18:09:00.001Z

Tools : GNUMed.org

2008-12-21T16:27:00.001Z

GNUmed Project

The GNUmed project builds an open source Electronic Medical Record. It is developed by a handful of medical doctors and programmers from all over the world. It can be useful to anyone documenting the health of patients, including but not limited to doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, ...

(read more)

Tools : Aeskulap - DICOM Viewer

2008-12-21T16:15:00.001Z

Aeskulap is a medical image viewer.

It is able to load a series of special images stored in the DICOM format for review. Additionally Aeskulap is able to query and fetch DICOM images from archive nodes (also called PACS) over the network.

The goal of this project is to create a full open source replacement for commercially available DICOM viewers.

(read more)

News : Android comes with a kill-switch, 16 October 2008

2008-10-17T22:09:00.000+01:00

Google has put itself in charge of policing Android devices. The search giant is retaining the right to delete applications from Android handsets on a whim.

(read more)

Background : NHS IT provider McKesson uses Linux to cut IT costs, 12 December 2007

2008-10-17T22:05:00.001+01:00

In 2004, health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies began focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices and that meant Linux.

(read more)

News : Open Source makes historic UK breakthrough, 22 September 2008

2008-10-05T15:19:00.001+01:00

OPEN SOURCE companies have been granted official permission to supply software to the UK public sector for the first time in British history.

(read more)

Background : UK Government criticised for stifling open source in schools, 19 December 2006

2008-10-05T15:13:00.002+01:00

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE is being kept out of schools through government policy which "stifles innovation and locks users into high cost software," open sorcerers claim.

(read more)

Policy : Open Source Software, 28 October 2004

2008-10-05T15:08:00.002+01:00

The key decisions of this policy are as follows:

• UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT
procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis.

• UK Government will only use products for interoperability that support open
standards and specifications in all future IT developments.

• UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services.

• UK Government will consider obtaining full rights to bespoke software code or
customisations of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software it procures
wherever this achieves best value for money.

• Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce software outputs shall specify
a proposed software exploitation route at the start of the project. At the
completion of the project, the software shall be exploited either commercially or
within an academic community or as OSS.2

(read more)

Tools : Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project

2008-09-30T20:07:00.002+01:00

Is the future of open-source mobile developments?

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use, which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

(read more)

News : Bad software bursts £1bn NHS bubble, 2 June 2008

2008-09-30T20:01:00.002+01:00

A KEY ELEMENT of the UK's gargantuan health IT scheme was exposed as a fallacy yesterday when Fujitsu, one of four original suppliers of patient systems, dumped its £1bn contract, becoming the second supplier to have jumped ship. The IT industry has taken Fujitsu's resignation as evidence that both its £1bn contract with Connecting for Health (CfH), the UK health IT quango, and the original aims of the National Programme, had become untenable.

(read more)

Background : Tories would decentralise state information, says David Cameron, 4 April 2008

2008-09-30T19:52:00.002+01:00

Tory leader David Cameron has said that the Conservatives would avoid large-scale central IT systems such as the NHS National Programme for IT.

Cameron also praised open-source development, saying it would help smaller companies grow.

“We will follow private sector best practice which is to introduce open standards that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components," he said.

(read more)

Background : Processing electronic claims, 25 September 2007

2008-09-30T19:50:00.002+01:00

NHS Connecting for Health will provide two electronic mailboxes to which data files of claims maybe submitted by ophthalmic contractors. Data files must be in the form of attachments to e-mails.

(read more)

Background : NHS Connecting for Health announces deal with Novell, 2 August 2007

2008-09-30T19:39:00.001+01:00

NHS Connecting for Health has negotiated a £21.8m agreement with infrastructure and software services supplier Novell which will save the NHS up to £75 million over three years, compared to previous arrangements.

(read more)

Background : NHS to trial Sun's Linux desktop, 17 December 2003

2008-09-30T19:37:00.002+01:00

NHS IT Director General Richard Granger has ordered a trial of Sun Microsystems' Linux-based Java Desktop system as part of the NPfIT.

(read more)

Background : Doctors prefer Linux to Windows, 23 May 2003

2008-09-30T19:35:00.002+01:00

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has chosen a secure Linux-based server solution for the bulk emailing of 6,000 GPs across the UK, after a decision not to use Windows.

(read more)

Background : Novell to Provide Security, Systems Management and Linux to United Kingdom's National Health Service, 2 December 2005

2008-09-30T19:32:00.001+01:00

Novell today announced a £21.8 million ($39 million) contract with the United Kingdom's leading Department of Health agency for a comprehensive set of security, management and infrastructure solutions that will improve delivery of health services to UK citizens. The three year agreement with the National Health Service (NHS) Connecting for Health program lets NHS leverage Novell® solutions across the entire NHS infrastructure, comprising upwards of 600,000 workstations, and will result in substantial cost savings for the NHS. As a strategic partner, Novell will help the NHS deliver its National Programme for IT, improving patient care and services and transforming the way the NHS works.

(read more)

Background : NHS continues open source software trials, 15 July 2005

2008-09-30T19:25:00.003+01:00

The NHS in England will continue to test free-to-use "open source" software, despite paying to run Microsoft software on some 550,000 desktop computers.

(read more)

Welcome to the LiNHS Project

2008-07-12T20:57:00.005+01:00

Welcome to the LiNHS Project, back in about 2005, a TV chef Jamie Oliver attempted to change the way children, parents, teachers and the government thought about food and to improve the quality of it for every bodies health and future.(read more)

Although, I don't intend to do what Mr Oliver did, I do intend to seek answers to the question of Linux and the NHS, or LiNHS.

I also want to know if the Linux communities feel that it is viable, possible or even doable?