Continuing the discussion from Meet up: In house, open source tools for the NHS 28/05/26 - 18:30-19:30 - #8 by pacharanero
This month I’ve been pondering whether we perhaps need some kind of ‘Open Health Technology Foundation’ that could offer support (practical and pastoral) to those like us, that are interested in open source health tech, and could also house projects that need an internet home. I have a number of projects that will proabably need this kind of ‘independent foundation home’, so I may well set up something like this.
I’'d be interested to get the views of this community on how such a foundation would work and whether you would be likely to join/become a supporter.
My initial sketch of the idea would be to set it up as a UK CIC (Community Interest Company), which is a low-admin, high-trust business vehicle that avoids the overhead of being a Charity. I’ve run 2 CICs before, so I know the area. It would aim to be more about building and doing, than a talking shop that writes Strategies, Reports, and other waffle that would be ignored anyway.
I was thinking something like the FSF or the Software Freedom Conservancy, which is a charity in the US, and amongst other things lets member projects accept donations as a charity.
I say this because I have donated to projects, but not the SFC in the past, despite their admirable mission.
https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/
It would aim to be more about building and doing, than a talking shop that writes Strategies, Reports, and other waffle that would be ignored anyway.
Beyond the building and doing I feel there is a need for some guidance so providers can understand how they can use open source while meeting their obligations to patients and staff, but also procurement (Maybe this exists already).
What are the costs? / What are the benefits? / how can they use a project with their existing staff?
Even large trust rarely have in-house programmers - and those that do have 100% of their time already allocated. Most have system administrators and maybe a professional DB engineer if they are lucky.
(@mods should this be a new ‘topic?)
Hello from across the pond Marcus,
You may remember me from NHS England’s venture into open source back in 2014-15. The CIC model is what I and Colin Smith proposed NHS England adopt…and I believe that’s what Apperta is/was?
Still feel it’s a great option for use cases like the one you describe…a couple of provinces in Canada have created the option of this class of corporation (we have both provincial and federal paths to incorporation).
Cheers,
Joseph Dal Molin
p.s. would love to connect and catchup when you have some time
Absolutely I do remember you - feels like a long time ago now, that NHSE were pushing for more open source. You may have seen that they recently abandoned OSS entirely.
Apperta was and still is a CIC, but sadly they seem to be a pretty much spent force now. They sucked up all the NHS Open Source ‘oxygen’ when they bust onto the scene, and then - well they did nothing much with it. At peak they managed to get hold of £500k of NHSE money, man what I could have achieved with that would have been a lot more effectual than what they did with it - committees and directors and boards and ceremony.
I’ve left my post where it was because it did contain a response to the ‘meetup’, but I’ve copied the bit about an OHTF into this new topic and moved the replies.
First post {gulp.today}
I would be interested in exploring / supporting something like this.
There are quite a few clinicians and small teams building useful open tools around clinical systems, data, workflow and decision support, but the difficult part is often everything around the code - governance, assurance, hosting, maintainership, succession and finding a credible route into NHS use.
A lightweight foundation could provide some of that shared scaffolding without taking ownership away from individual projects. The practical support would matter, but so would the pastoral side. Much of this work is done by individuals alongside demanding clinical roles, and it can be quite isolating.
A CIC sounds like a sensible starting point, provided it remains focused on helping people build, maintain and deploy useful things rather than becoming another strategy-producing body.
I would be interested in joining the discussion and contributing from the perspective of a GP who develops tools both standalone and across existing and emerging clinical systems.
Jez
Hi all, I recently joined openhealthhub after stumbling across it whilst browsing an NHS github repo.
I’m not a GP, but a clinical pharmacist by background. Over the last five years or so, I’ve gradually moved into informatics and technology work and like a lot of people here by the sound of it, discovered I enjoy it far more than the traditional clinical role, pharmacy in my case.
Along the way I’ve taught myself Python, SQL, web development and a fair few other technologies. Most of what I’ve built so far has been a collection of small projects driven by my own ideas, partly to solve problems I’ve come across and partly to keep learning.
The discussion around setting up a CIC sounds really interesting. I’d be very keen to get involved if there is room for a non-GP colleague.
Yes. I agree a CIC is a good vehicle, and I would be interested to join.
In principle sounds like an interesting idea. I’d be interested in joining / supporting - pending a bit more understanding about what that would mean in practice!
A CIC is a very good way. INTEROPen is a CIC and we survive on fresh air (apologies @ian )
It certainly feels like a long time ago…there was quite a bit of momentum, sad that Apperta didn’t have the DNA to be able to channel it effectively. Not the first false start 
, here’s a link to the Open Source Health Care Alliance meeting…the first significant gathering of open source community of practice that I’m aware of, hosted by NHSE in London 2001:
OSCHA 2001 in London