On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Joseph Dal Molin wrote: ... > Colin Smith. In the fall of 2001 Nigel Bell, the then CEO of the NHS IA > gave the following interview: > > http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/news/1125702
Joseph, Thanks for the reference. Reading this article, it does look like the NHS seriously considered open source. > It may be valuable to document all the bits and pieces, especially given > the risk of the billion pound effort to "boil the ocean" from above.... >From the article: ----- begin quote But open source is not a universal panacea, and there's still a place for proprietory software. The Department of Health is currently negotiating a ?20m deal with commercial vendors including Microsoft, said Bell. "In simple terms we are sitting on the fence, and are not going to be committing ourselves either way because we don't need to." ----- end quote My interpretation is that NHS decided to fund proprietary software at the expense of open source software (for obvious reasons). With that decision made, they realized "sitting on the fence" gives a public appearance of "confusion" and thus pulled Colin Smith's paper. Rather than blaming NHS, I give them credit for valuing and publishing Colin Smith's paper and seriously considering open source in the first place (and also sponsoring OSHCA 2001). Just because NHS got off the fence and gave money to proprietary vendors this time, it does not mean they won't make a different decision next time. Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
