
Investigation: WannaCry cyber attack and the NHS - davidgerard
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/investigation-wannacry-cyber-attack-and-the-nhs/
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fredley
NHS IT is, from my experience, a complete clusterf*ck. The NHS is sliced up in
many different ways (e.g. by Trusts, which are regional, but also by field
across trusts, e.g. radiology – there are many other 'dimensions' of slicing
besides these two). All of these different dimensions of the NHS have at
various times provisioned their own IT services from myriad suppliers,
initially without much oversight. Interoperability ends up taking massively
more resources than the actual implementation of any individual service.
Attempts to unify the NHS's approach to IT are far too little far too late.

One of the contributing factors to the extent to which WannaCry affected NHS
services was, afaik, the fact that the suppliers of some closed-source systems
went out of business, so no updates could be provided for those systems.

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dm319
I guess that's what happens when you give autonomy to trusts to
commission/contract their IT as they see fit.

You could argue it is part of a political movement to create a free market
around healthcare, which has seen healthcare trusts and CCGs (clinical
commissioning groups) seek contracts for services that were previously
provided by the NHS - car parking, waste disposal, laundry cleaning, cleaning
services, sterile services, pharmacy, hospital buildings, payroll, finance,
PET and MRI scanners etc etc..

There are relatively few things left that are commissioned on a national
level. Nurses and doctors contracts, drugs (which gives huge purchasing power
and very favourable prices for expensive drugs compared to small countries),
clinical healthcare services which manage particular conditions. ok I'm
struggling to think of more.

> The coalition government wanted to accelerate patient choice and
> competition, consistent with the wider belief that competition in public
> services drives improvement. The government’s critics recognised that
> competition was not new, but were concerned that the NHS reforms would
> result in much greater involvement of for-profit companies in the NHS.
> -King's fund

There was previously a very expensive (~£10bn) project to implement a national
IT patient notes system, which was abandoned.[1]

As someone else has mentioned (re NHSbuntu), it would be great of all that
money had been put into something that could be developed further, even if it
couldn't solve all the problems at the time.

Our local hospital (Queen Elizabeth, Birmingham) have a nice bit of software
called 'PICS', which is one of the best I've used. It's fast, allows for
electronic prescribing, note taking in clinic, ability to view results and
viewing vital signs. But I don't think it has been sold to any other
healthcare trusts, so it is essentially a stand-alone product at that trust.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health#Cost...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health#Costs)

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meshy
I hope this will encourage a move to NHSbuntu [0].

[0]: [https://nhos.openhealthhub.org/](https://nhos.openhealthhub.org/)

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_pmf_
So, it was probably a UK op.

