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30,000 hours of open source hackery, 10,000 of them in health and care tech. I co-founded a tech company that created open eObs and made NHoS / NHSbuntu - an OS for the NHS. These days I research the security and privacy of apps listed in the NHS Apps Library.
Amor sementa in voi d'ogne virtute, e d'ogni operazion che merta pene
TL;DR. I found secret info on github, notified the owner, and found out the hard way that UK cyber law is broken. Part 1 of ...?
Note for Cabinet Office on the use of hackdays to achieve a level playing field for Open Source in procurement and production.
This is my dissertation from my BA Politics back in 2008.
I wrote this essay in my third-year of my BA Politics, back in 2008. The module was 'Culture, Globalisation and Power', taught by Adrian Sledmere
I wrote this essay in my third-year of my BA Politics, back in 2008. The module was 'New Radical Political Economy', taught by Dr Derek Wall.
I wrote this essay in my third-year of my BA Politics, back in 2008. The module was 'Discourse, Power, Politics', taught by Dr Saul Newman
I wrote this essay in my third-year of my BA Politics, back in 2008. The module was 'Liberalism and its Critics', taught by Prof Sanjay Seth
I wrote this essay in my third-year of my BA Politics, back in 2008. The module was 'Beyond All Reason', taught by Dr James Martin
And another thing…
Sorry (and of course thanks) to anyone who’s helped out with the NHSbuntu Linux project and it’s revamped version NHoS but I think we’ve finally reached a point where we’ve had enough. The entire NHSbuntu/NHoS team (4 core members) have been working as volunteers, with a few small work packages and pieces of funding courtesy of the Apperta Foundation, but we have received…
Here are the materials I shared with NHS CIO Will Smart and Alex Chaplin in October. NHoS were invited back by Will Smart to discuss the ‘What’s Next’ in more detail.1 with apologies for timewarping with this post. ↩︎
Marcus and I had a busy summer, what with holidays, hospitals, hacks (days/weeks/camps) and house moves. I’d like you to accept this post with our apologies for being relatively quiet recently. Now, without further ado, here’s an update on all things NHSbuntu. A winning hack. In the news. A spot of bother. Working with us. What’s coming up. Thanks A winning hack. Back in June we were invited…
NHSbuntu is built for the NHS from the Ubuntu open source operating system. To create our distribution we use tools from the Ubuntu ecosystem to package our customisations and build the download images. In this post I’ll describe the techniques and tools we use for this. Customisations Our core customisations are handled using a template from the ubuntu-default-settings package. This…
We’re very excited to be able to announce that the Apperta Foundation, (which was formerly the NHS England Open Source Programme) has agreed to provide NHSbuntu with initial support funding of £40k, in order to facilitate the initial few work packages required for NHSbuntu’s next few steps. Details of the work packages will be published shortly, and we are of course open to community…
Jon Hoeksma interviewed us about NHSbuntu for Digital Health. In the wake of Friday’s international cyber attacks, which caused widespread disruption across NHS organisations, a small team of developers is recommending the health service reduce its reliance on Microsoft. The NHS almost exclusively uses Microsoft operating systems, some of which – like Windows XP – are no longer officially…
Gijs Hillenius wrote about NHSbuntu for the Open Source Observatory. A group of British IT health care specialists have tailored the Ubuntu Linux distribution for use by the UK’s national health service (NHS) on its workstations. The alpha version of NHSbuntu was unveiled at the South West CIO Forum on 27 April. The advantages of NHSbuntu over proprietary PC operating systems include security,…
Look. It’s time we talked about something. NHSland has a problem. A debt problem. A technical debt problem of immense proportions. We’re friends. We can talk about this. Openly. We want to help. Beveridge identified Five ‘Giant Evils’. We’ve also identified five giants. Five giant factors that compound the technical debt in NHSland: Security, Legacy, Speed, Cost, Freedom. Beveridge’s work was…
Here is a sneek peek at a presentation I shared with the Neova dev team recently. I’ll be posting this to the Neova site in the next few weeks.
Paternity leave imminent. Looking forward to spending a good 6 weeks off work with Baby 2.0.
Really? 6 months since my last update? Bonkers. By way of an update, here are a few slideshares from recent conferences I’ve been presenting at. At Healthcare Innovation Expo Tactix4 were participants in the NHS England Open Source Programme and I shared these slides as part of my discussion Back in Manchester a week later for BCS Health 2014 I participated in the stream ‘Fit for…
Further to my post last week dissecting a major Govt IT project to deliver a political objective, here are the slides (and notes) I used in my presentation “7 Deadly Sins of Tech” at the Digital Doctor Conference 2013. More videos and slidecasts from the 2nd DigiDocConf are being uploaded to Vimo.
This is the second in a short series of posts where I’m looking at the announcements from NHS England / HSCIC in support of open source solutions for NHS organisations. In this post I’m looking at the role of governance and community around open source projects. Following the Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards Technology Fund announced in June of this year, Gary McAllister posted a comment…
There have been several announcements from NHS England / HSCIC in support of open source solutions for NHS organisations. These announcements have spawned much discussion and debate - on EHI/HSJ/NHSHackday sites and at EHILive - which ranges in style and content from Chicken Licken to Richard Stallman. In a short series of blogs I’m planning to post I’m going to look at these…
Presented to the HANDI Health Apps conference at EHILive 2013 and continuing my series of provocative and disruptive anti-presentations here I talk about approaches to developing, distributing and deploying software solutions in social systems. If you think this is an extended rant on the virtues of opensource, think again. Drawing on Mauss, Dawkins, Benkler, Chesbrough and others here I discuss…
The Village This last week I was at EHI Live with HANDI and Tactix4. HANDI were producing one of the streams at this exhibition ‘The HANDI Health Apps Conference’. HANDI Health Apps is the first national conference dedicated to health & social care apps and lightweight digital tools to take place in the UK. It was a “must attend” event for app developers, health and care professionals,…
Some notes taken on observing people the other side of the pond dissecting a major Govt IT project to deliver a political objective. Would this project have benefited from Opensorcery ? If PPACA wasn’t communist enough! Writing in Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul Ford explains that the debacle known as healthcare.gov makes clear that it is time for government to change the way it delivers IT:…
So, this years Healthcare IT Champion of the Year, the special category of the awards that is chosen by the readers of EHI, was announced as Kemi Adenubi, the GPSoC programme director for the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Adenubi described winning the award as “absolutely fabulous”; “It was wonderful to be nominated, it was great fun to have people say ‘I voted for…
As many of you know I used to have a blog here called ‘Sarah Teather is My MP’. But it looks like soon (2015) Sarah is to stand down from Parliament and will no longer be my MP. The former Children’s Minister told the Observer that she feels Nick Clegg’s party no longer campaigns sufficiently for social justice and liberal values on immigration. In a statement on her…
I’ve been nominated for EHI Healthcare IT Champion 2013. Vote for me and give your support to “playing nicely together”! Its a great honour to be nominated by my peers for an award which seeks to recognise commitment and achievement above and beyond someone’s day job. Sure, I run Tactix4 which provides services and support for opensource solutions to the NHS but I’ve…
From “Berkshire bigboy 2e2 in the pink - apart from crushing debt burden” (29th June 2012) and “Integrator-reseller 2e2 ‘broke banking covenant’, hits credit buffers” (9th Jan 2013) leading to “UK’s 2e2 goes titsup” (29th Jan 2013 ) those following 2e2 will have seen the writing on the wall. 2e2 released a statement to eHealth Insider saying…
This week I went to a supplier engagement event led by people from the Government Digital Services on behalf of the NHS Commissioning Board. Under discussion was the re-platforming of a major component of services provided to patients. Hopefully the re-platforming will be as easy as replacing the engine in an aeroplane mid-flight. And doesn’t end up crashing…. And that the development…
This weekend I was in Oxford for the first NHSHackday of 2013 where I worked on a video consultations project with some others from Tactix4 and Alacrity Foundation. I helped a few other with their hacking too, including @amcunningham and @simon_penny who created Muto network. We thought that as online appointment booking and using video for clinical consultations are so QIPPing hot right now with…
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A couple of video interviews with me made with Pete Cogle from Inside Talking.
I’m pleased that my company Tactix4 has won two awards from The Information Sharing Challenge Fund , a Department of Health initiative funding ideas that change the way information is used and shared between different organisations. Two NHS Trusts bid with Tactix4 demonstrating that our ideas showed value for money that could easily be adopted by other NHS organisations as part of the NHS…
I’m pleased that my company Tactix4 has won two awards from The Information Sharing Challenge Fund , a Department of Health initiative funding ideas that change the way information is used and shared between different organisations. Two NHS Trusts bid with Tactix4 demonstrating that our ideas showed value for money that could easily be adopted by other NHS organisations as part of the NHS…
Here are a few videos produced by event amplifier Kirsty Pitkin at EHI Live Skunkworks 2012 showing me presenting my recent projects with openGPSoC and Tactix4.
Dick Vinegar, the Patient From Hell , wrote about the Westminster Health Forum last month on “accelerating innovation in healthcare” at which I was presenting. I gave a somewhat contrarian view on ‘innovation’ with a few ideas on escaping the NHS Giant Hairball . My presentation is published on slideshare and previewed below.
In my job at Tactix4 I worked with others in the opensource and healthcare space to produce this briefing note for Cabinet Office on the use of hackdays to achieve a level playing field for Open Source in procurement and production. This short note was produced in response to a request from Liam Maxwell made at EHI Live 2012 to investigate how hackdays could help procurement. Contributors Malcolm…
A selection of videos from NHSHackdays (London � Liverpool) 2012 showing the Patient List Hack (London winner) and the AsKiT hack (Liverpool second place).
With the rest of Tactix4 I headed to Liverpool in September for the second NHS Hackday. We worked on a project called AsKiT which came second. It was great to collaborate with others from NHS organisations to create problem solving code. **The Problem: **All throughout the NHS there are a myriad of forms, questionnaires and assessments that need to be done, and the vast majority of them are done…
There is a renewed vigor in healthcare IT. Lots of great projects curated by enthusiastic people, encouraging new thinking around the definition, development design and delivery of technology for healthcare. Here I’m thinking about DigiHealthCon , HANDI , NHS Hack Day and the eHealthOpenSource competition and Pipe and Hat Club. I’m involved in three organisations: eHealth OpenSource as…
I participated in the first NHS Hackday last month. The weekend event in central London brought together doctors, healthcare leaders and software developers with the aim of creating solutions to problems experienced on a daily basis in the NHS. The winning development, called ‘Patient List’, aimed to improve the handover of patients and replace the traditional task-list methods usually employed by…
From a thread on the handihealth discussion group. @medicine20 tweeted ‘ The reason Silicon Valley hasn’t built a good health app ’ The general thrust of the article is that current crop of popular mHealth reflect the needs and desires of particular socio-economic groups: white, suburban, materially secure, educated technologists creating apps that compliment the gym going,…