[robgough]

The biggest risk here would surely be that around PID (Patient Identifiable Data). Who is responsible for ensuring the safety of this data?

As it is right now, it's ultimately the trusts themselves (as is my understanding), but what safeguards will there (or could there) be in place to keep this data safe.

And what about that data? Do we force any new staff-written applications to create their own MPI etc. or do we let them access the main systems through some kind of API? In which case, that would need creating - and interfacing to a variety of different software is never simple. If it's all to stay on the internal network, then who hosts these apps - and where does that budget come from?

There are a lot of big questions and potential risks here and I'd be very interested to see what these eye-catching initiatives turn out to be. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I remain pessimistic about these being anything but trivial and largely pointless.

If this was a serious effort, why ask the doctors, nurses and other clinical staff to learn to code - and not reach out to the open-source development community and ask them for their help. I'm sure a great many developers have, or know someone, who has used the NHS and would love to have a part in making things better.

[danielgrieve]

I have to agree with pretty much all of your points.

Securing Patient Identifiable Data should be near (if not at) the top of the list of priorities. Some API where data can be requested which only returns non-PID data would probably be the way forward, but there will certainly be cases where there is a need for certain data that will be identifiable.

I'd probably say that NHS staff don't need to learn how to code, but should instead work much closer with those who can.

As in an "insider" there is an endless list of services that could be improved with software if we could just open our doors slightly.