The National Health Service in England has put much effort into improvements with Information Technology over the last 10years. While some successes were made, unfortunately important parts of the NHS (esp the acute hospital sector) did not particularly benefit from the massive investment, as recently explored in NPfIT Horrible Histories..
In that context the Nuffield Trust in London ran a workshop yesterday, exploring the potential for the open source VistA Electronic Health Record system in the NHS.
“Sharing international experience: Is implementing the VA’s electronic health record system an option for the NHS?”
The Veterans Administration are acknowledged international leaders in the fields of healthcare reform, process improvement and information technology in healthcare.
As I’m involved in promoting the role of open source in the NHS and been doing some work towards alignment with VistA, I was asked to speak on Practical Considerations for VistA in the NHS.
The discussion was good and some important actions were agreed. The group involved will now begin working towards some of the recommendations of the NHS VistA campaign, in particular the prospect of a Gold Standard version of VistA for the NHS.
Frectally speaking 
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