Skunkworks opens up IT for debate

Healthcare communities need to take responsibility for establishing the interoperability of IT systems, said one of the speakers during the Skunkworks debate at EHI Live 2012.

The debate asked whether open source, open data or open standards were the more effective way forward.

Malcolm Newbury, consulting director at Guildfoss Limited, said the only way to get cooperation and interoperability between systems is through open standards.

“Open Standards to me is absolutely core if we want to make any kind of difference in healthcare.”

However, he said healthcare organisations also needed to play a role. “We need to get hospitals to engage in the process to work out what it needs and how it can get it from the market.”

Rob Dyke, managing director of Tactix4, disagreed and said open source can be used to solve healthcare challenges and was the key to openness in healthcare IT.

He said that it made it easier to get the best possible solution and that it allows trusts not to be bound to any given vendor or platform.

“As a provider it keeps me on my toes because if I mess up they’ve got service provider independence and they can move away from us at any moment in time.”

The panel agreed that openness in general was the key to making healthcare IT procurement work.

But Simon Phipps, president of Open Source Initiative, pointed out that when looking at a value of a solution, whether it was open source, data or standards, money did matter.

“Everyone who’s interested is engaged because they can make money from it. Every single person I have met who’s contributing significantly to open source is doing it because somebody pays them.”

However, he also said that organisations needed to focus on owning IT systems that would do a good job for them, and not just on costs and profits.

The marketing director at ScraperWiki, Aine Mcguire said we lived in a difficult climate, but he called on the NHS to be smarter in the way it procured systems.

He said he expected there would be a change in procurement methods over the next few years.

The Skunkworks continues today at EHI Live 2012.