NHS England Says No To VistA

NHS England has decided not to pay £7m to anglicise the US Veterans Health Administration’s open source electronic medical record, VistA.

Instead, it will create a framework for NHS trusts to buy open source system support, hosting and change management.

Beverley Bryant, NHS England’s director of strategic systems and technology, told EHI that two UK companies and one NHS trust have shown a serious interest in open-sourcing their health IT systems. One of those is IMS Maxims.

Guidance released by NHS England in July said it would spend some of the £260m technology fund on exploring the creation of an NHS VistA.

Bryant said 64 trusts who applied for the fund ticked the box to say they were interested in the VistA project and when investigated, 13 of them were “really serious about picking it up and running with it."