Re: Wow.
Hear Here, as the Audiologist's sign says.
677 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2009
I can assure you that anything that centralises Procurement into a one-size-fits-all Blob/Procurement IT system will do exactly the opposite of optimisation.
Currently going through end of financial year contract renewals for critical IT Infrastructure licencing and I can tell you this is why Daddy drinks.
To answer your first question: Yes.
There's a lot of work across local Integrated Care Boards (the new CCGs it seems) to try to do more joined up thinking. However, each organisation (GP, Local Hospital Trust, wider Hospitals Group) are individually funded and run with different levels of Technical Maturity/Technical Debt and different clinical priorities which directs or diverts funding/attention. I can say that it's getting a lot better with, for example, NHS England, paying for Windows E5 licences so everyone can at least get MDE on the desktop and server environment and provide assistance from the NCSOC. Everything else is the wild west.
With respect, no they wouldn't. The issue is simply that, when the IT system(s) stop working, Business Continuity (going back to pen and paper in many cases) slows down the process back to those Matronic levels which means not as many patients can be seen, tested and treated in any given timeframe so the backlog, usually in Critical Care settings, increases and can get to a point where the A&E doors are closed. Cancelling non-urgent care, as bad as it is, protects the Critical Care services from getting so clogged up they need to shut.
When I'm in the office I have the same issue but the motion sensors are hidden behind pipework and climate control units so actually have a limited field of view. This means often needing to stand up and wave like crazy (not in a calm, Jedi, 'credits will do fine' way, like 'help, someone's drowning over here' kind of way). I'm assuming this is my employer just checking that we're still alive. No need to pay the 'leccy bill if the employees are dead, I suppose.
Aside from anything else, there are IT systems required for tracking paper records. Yep. I know.
Almost 20 years ago I remember seeing paper records strewn all over the place as a building that was sold off to be turned into flats was just abandoned. I was just there to pull out the network kit. I hope to FSM that those records had been digitised first but I have my doubts.
We know that Healthcare is being targeted by Nation States. The main issues in critical infrastructure/services is that you don't get downtime to patch the huge IT infrastructure estate (even though NHS England require resolution in 14 days or SIRO risk signoff) so can remain vulnerable for months.
Anything InfoSec: they need to get lucky once, we need to get lucky all the time.
From information I've gathered from similar organisations, the Broadcom licensing change has increased costs up to 1300%, mostly around orgs with smaller VMWare footprint than my lot. The thing is that it's those smaller footprint orgs that are being gouged that are more easily able to migrate so Broadcom may be only getting a very short term boost here.
Yes, the weasel words do stand out "roughly, for included value, we are not increasing costs."
"Yes I know we're forcing you to buy two bottles of champagne and a whole iberico ham in order to allow you to buy your tin of beans and supermarket sliced bread but, I think you'll find, it works out no more expensive than if you'd have bought them all seperately"
Glad I'm sorting my Cisco EA now.
Well, that's my hope if this deal goes through. I use 3 for my personal phone and Vodafone for the work device. I can usually get some signal on one or the other, especially on the train, but never both at the same time.
Of course what we'll actually get is them both being equally shit at the same time.
Absolutely the eternal bouncing between CapEx and OpEx. Especially when shit you've bought on CapEx eventually moves to the OpEx book when support/subscriptions run out.
We're currently spending a six figure sum to maintain a DR instance we don't (and hopefully won't) use and, naturally, that's rightly catching the eye of the beancounters.
Currently having sector-wide discussions on Cloud Adoption and, as one of the few in the group who actually have a significant (Redmond) Cloud presence, I'm waving my arms above my head screaming Noooooo!
Part of the issue re: security of Medical Devices generally is that they are shipped to the Clinicians essentially as a Black Box that has a Certification for use as a Medical Device. Usually certified several years previously. Any "change" to the state of that device, for example: patching the underyling OS, deviates from the original specification meaning the device is no longer certified and can't be used.
Essentially, Medical Devices are a huge security problem because they, and the whole ecosystem is designed for a point-in-time configuration not security.
Yes, and I worked for a (now defunct) company specialising in early personalised 3D avatars where the VCs panicked, brought in someone to pivot the company to sell said low-res images of the custom, personalised, hi res 3D image as that's where the quick money was.