HSCIC completes migration to NHS Spine 2 backbone
New NHS Spine is 'the biggest public-sector IT system to be built entirely on open source software', claims HSCIC
The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has completed the final phase of its move from the Spine backbone, which was created as part of the ill-fated National Programme for IT (NPfIT), to Spine 2.
The Spine was part of the national infrastructure that stored patient information and enabled electronic messaging. It has been singled out by many as one of the few success stories of NPfIT, but as it went live more than 10 years ago, contracts with the suppliers who delivered it were about to end, necessitating some kind of revamp.
As part of the upgrade to Spine 2, it has abandoned the original Spine's Oracle relational database and moved to open source platforms, such as the Riak NoSQL database from developer Basho. HSCIC claims that the new Spine is the biggest public-sector IT system to be built entirely on open source software.
"We wanted to develop a service that HSCIC and developers could work with and adapt, to suit the needs of individual NHS organisations. The entire system is built on open source, freely available software, which makes it much easier to work with and develop," said Rob Shaw, director of assurance services at HSCIC.
"The team working on Spine operate an agile working method, which makes it much faster to improve and change the service. We are all proud of what has already been achieved and excited to continue to develop the service in the future," he added.
Another big shift is that HSCIC chose IT consultancy BJSS to work with it on the project, taking over a role previously held by BT. HSCIC said that it had taken the technological backbone of the NHS from a private company to in-house, public-sector management.
"The usual practice for a big public-sector project like this has been to give the whole thing to a large supplier. We decided that we could manage and make improvements to Spine more flexibly in-house, and have worked with a number of specialist SMEs to successfully deliver our aims," said Shaw.
HSCIC claimed that the 18-month transition project to the new Spine was achieved without disrupting the service it provides to 28,000 organisations, while simultaneously enabling the secure transfer of almost 150TB of data, including the demographic details of 80 million people.
According to HSCIC, the system has saved £21m in its first year and saved the NHS 750 working days of time to date.
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