An operating system for the NHS

@marcus_baw

GP & Emergency Physician

Clinical informatician / ‘General Hacktitioner’

NHS.UK Alpha, RCGP HIG, Endeavour Health, Apperta Foundation, Eyedraw/OpenEyes, Professional Records Standards Body, NHS Healthy Child Programme, NHS WiFi Programme, NHS Hack Day, CCIO Network, UKHealthCamp, Clinical Software Usability Survey 2015-2016...

‘Open Source is the Only Way For Medicine’

YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

Windows 7 End Of Support: January 14th 2020

= You have to migrate to Windows 10 before 2020

Old hardware won't work with Win 10

Many clinical apps don't work with Win10 or Edge

You have to replace all legacy clinical apps before 2020

You need to upgrade all your hardware before 2020

There Is No Credible Plan

£700 to license a new machine

1300 machines / organisation

5 year lifetime of applications

>500 'major' sized organisations in NHS (CCG + Acutes + MH)

£455m

source: best guessing, CIO interviews, and http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs

£455m

legacy clinical apps with pre-Win10 dependencies

no resources to migrate off those legacy clinical apps

increasing security risk from these older dependencies

YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

Windows 10 leaks patient data

Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft in over 30 ways

(incl raw keystrokes)

This can be over-ridden in your org - but it is extra work, and not easy

= We may not be able to stop privacy-critical PID keystroke data being sent to Microsoft via Windows 10 PCs

We need to think hard about whether Windows 10 is fit for the NHS.

What is YOUR Plan for 2020?

An operating system for the NHS

What is Linux?

A free, open source UNIX based operating system

Released 1991 by Linus Torvalds, Finnish Computer Science student

Now running on 96.6% of the world’s top 1 million websites

It’s the operating system inside Android devices and Chromebook laptops

It’s used by the giants of the web including Amazon, Facebook and Google

Apple, Oracle, and IBM all use free UNIX variants

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is ‘Linux for Human Beings’

A more friendly wrapper around Linux

Backed by Canonical, who provide support services

The most popular Linux variant, with millions of deployments worldwide

We have taken Ubuntu and pre-configured it to work with the NHS’s most common needs and requirements.

What is NHSbuntu?

NHSbuntu takes plain Ubuntu and optimises it for the NHS

Canonical have asked us to become an Official Ubuntu 'Flavour'

removes packages the NHS doesn’t need

adds packages the NHS needs, develops custom elements

adds familiarity by configuring look & feel, branding etc

provides services around NHSbuntu - customisations, Disaster-recovery Live USB version, custom development.

getting involved

download the ISO, install and play!

demonstrating NHSmail, browser, office apps for the 80%

What are the team working on right now

Native Linux Identity Agent (for NHS Spine Smart cards)

Automated build chain tooling so we can programmatically make changes to image definition files and have the ISOs build and test automatically.

Exploration of the ‘NHSbuntu for Disaster Recovery’ use-case

Performance testing of LiveUSB version on fast USBdrives/USB SSD

Discovery work regarding different desktop environments - we’re thinking of switching to Cinnamon DE (from Gnome3 DE)

getting involved

download the ISO, install and play!