tmccormi wrote on Thursday, December 24, 2015:
Do we have anyone active on this forum in the UK interested in being deeply involved in promoting OpenEMR in the UK?
–Tony, President OEMR
Guys,
Some significant developments in the UK you should all be aware of. Kanteron Systems has leveraged their OsiriX open source radiology/DICOM business to develop a personalized medicine/genomics platform that is being made available to the UK’s NHS through Code4Health. The platform is open source using a license that allows for the development of API’s, plug-ins and add ons. Kanteron Systems has been growing at over 1,000% per year and Business Insider has called it one of the top potential Unicorns in the UK.
I believe that this is an example of the kinds of opportunities that exist for the Open Health, and particularly the OpenEMR community in the UK. NHS England has made it clear for the past year that their focus is Open Source solutions, and reemphasized their committment to open source during the recent EHI conference. As you can see in the clippings below, NHS England’s health IT budget has been allocated an additional one billion pounds over the next five years. Based on NHS England’s strategy most of that money should go to fund open source projects. That said, open source leaders in the UK say that there is a huge battle as the proprietary vendors want to grab that money. I will be posting a whole series of articles in Open Health News over the next few weeks that present the argument that NHS England should follow through with their strategy.
Without more ado, here are more details…
Agreement Gives UK’s NHS Access to Breakthrough Platform That Provides Integrated Imaging and Genomic Data at the Point of Care | Open Health News - http://www.openhealthnews.com/content/agreement-gives-uks-nhs-access-breakthrough-platform-provides-integrated-imaging-and-genomic
Kanteron Systems | Open Health News - http://www.openhealthnews.com/content/kanteron-systems
These 58 UK tech startups could soon be unicorns - Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/these-58-uk-tech-startups-could-soon-be-unicorns-2015-11?r=UK&IR=T
Articles on NHS England Health IT funding
Kelsey: government weight behind NHS IT - http://www.digitalhealth.net/infrastructure/46957/kelsey:-government-weight-behind-nhs-it?utm_source=Health%20Care%20Roundup&utm_campaign=67e6be6591-20151204&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_78e7587464-67e6be6591-64448461
NHS boost includes £1 billion for IT - http://www.digitalhealth.net/news/46928/nhs-boost-includes-£1-billion-for-it
EHI Live/Handy Health Conference
Below are the original calendar postings for the conference. I had planed on an extensive article, but it has been really hectic and I was just not able to carve the time. One of the major announcements during the EHI Live conference, which was co-sponsored by NHS England, was the creation of a Code4Health Interoperability Community. There was an online briefing on this two days after the EHI live conference. Below are some of the details.
EHI Live 2015 | Open Health News - http://www.openhealthnews.com/events/2015-10-25/ehi-live-2015
HANDI Health Apps Conference 2015 | Open Health News - http://www.openhealthnews.com/events/2015-09-27/handi-health-apps-conference-2015
Code4Health and Interoperability, In partnership with NHS England | Open Health News - http://www.openhealthnews.com/events/2015-11-05/code4health-and-interoperability-partnership-nhs-england
One of the key elements of what NHS England is doing is the creation of what is called the Community Interest Company (CIC), This is basically a code repository organization modeled after OSEHRA and adapted for the UK. Essentially they created a new legal entity to host open source projects. Then they created a Super-CIC that is an umbrella organization for CICs that serves to manage and create new CICs. And this is how a lot of the funding is being distributed. Currently there are 15 CICs including one very successful one for OpenEyes, an open source opthalmology application, one for OpenVistA, one for OpenMaxims, formerly a proprietary hospital-based EHR that went open source, etc. The key for the OpenEMR community is that the one piece that is missing is an open source EHR for clinics and physician offices. And there is a lot of interest in the UK for OpenEMR to play this role. You guys really need to pay close attention.
Best,
Roger
Roger A. Maduro
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