Open Source in the NHS: £22 million contract awarded to Novell

Novell has announced a £21.8 million contract with the NHS for a new identity management, application management and Linux-based server infrastructure that will improve the delivery of health services to UK citizens.

“Organizations like the NHS are increasingly demanding solutions that are based on open standards, since this gives them the flexibility to adapt to constantly changing
requirements at their speed”, said Tom Francese, president of Novel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Novell.

The contract is part of the wider NHS ‘Connecting for Health programme’, which aims to deliver greater consistency of IT infrastructure by rationalising the number of products in use, standardizing the approach to implementing products, and increasing the productivity of staff by leveraging IT more effectively.

The overriding benefit of the switch to open source is significant cost cutting. “It secures the NHS an enterprise class open source platform along with, more importantly, affordable support” said Richard Granger, director general of NHS IT. The open source software will support the NHS’s infrastructure, covering more than 600,000 workstations, used by more than 100,000 doctors, 380,000 nurses and 50,000 other health care professionals.

It marks an encouraging step forward since last year’s ‘disappearance’ of the NHS white Paper on converting systems to open source. The NHS withdrew this document from public scrutiny after reverting to a more conservative stance on open source. The big fear then apparently, was that open source meant no guarantee for the maintenance of information systems.

Novell has managed to allay the unfounded fear that Open Source would leave public services (and one as crucial as the NHS!) without support. It will provide consulting resources to deliver the National Programme for IT and ensure best practices throughout all divisions.

In Dublin the switchover of Beaumont Hospital to open source has saved £9 million in five years, with the biggest savings being made on e-mail systems and the picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). According to a case study (which fully endorsed the move), some of the staff was anxious about retraining to use open source software.

The NHS deal has taken these fears into account. Novell will provide NHS staff with training to ensure a smooth transition to open source as well as enabling the organisation to maximise the value of its new technology.

In November 2004, the Office of Government Commerce made recommendations that the public services, including the NHS, could make significant savings by switching to open source. This partnership between Novell and the NHS will show those public services that have not yet fully understood the benefits of the switch, that open source can be every bit as reliable as proprietary software. It is as user friendly. The maintenance is as easy. The significant difference lies in cost!