This is copied from the GP-UK discussion list, which is mainly UK, mainly general practitioner.
"I work in a Dermatology clinic at my local DGH, & we have recently put in a bid to provide the Derm service in my area, under the brave new world that is the commissioning NHS. It's 4 Drs - 2 GP's a Staff grade & a consultant. We would need to arrange appointments for pts - perhaps at 4 or more sites, & see pts - ideally in a paper free environment. We might have different Drs working at different sites on different days. We're trying to get our heads around some of the logistic issues inherent in all this. Where to organise appointments from (one GP practice perhaps - riding on the back of their appointment system?) Can we use a pre-existing GP clinical system on Portable laptops? Could we sync the patient database so that a patient's record would be accessible from ALL laptops? How would we back up the data on the laptops? How secure would laptop data be (say within Isoft 's Synergy) if one were lost. What sorts of hoops should we expect to junp through regarding Data protection, Caldicott guardian rules etc? Could we easily scan in drawings of lesions or Digital pics into a record. Anyone with helpful comments on any of this would be much appreciated, especially anyone who has set up anything similar. " How far have we progressed toward being able to say "get your generic IT support staff (minimal) to download and set up this FLOSS software; call this list of people/firms for second line support, and this list for implementation advice and/or training"? -- Adrian Midgley