NHS to host first ‘hack day’ event
pharmafile | May 22, 2012 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Goldacre, Gray, London, NHS, hack event
The NHS will host its first ‘hack day’ event this weekend in London, with the aim of sharing software that promotes health.
Hack days – or software development days – have been used by technology firms and businesses for years, but it will be the first time such an event has been taken up by the NHS.
The event is the brainchild of Dr Carl Reynolds, who said he was inspired by the Cabinet Office’s successful hack days, and decided to team up with the technology start-up community to make it happen.
Dr Reynolds, a junior doctor, national clinical fellow, and co-founder of the software company Open Health Care UK, said: “There’s so much to be done in digital health, no employer can own all of the talent, I hope the NHS Hack Day will show the NHS what can be done with a different business model.”
Attendees will use publicly available datasets such as NICE’s guidelines and the NHS Atlas of Variation, to make new IT tools relevant to the public and clinicians.
The event will be hosted by 50 doctors and 150 software developers and designers, and is being supported by a host of senior NHS figures, including: Sir Muir Gray, Sir Liam Donaldson, Sir Bruce Keogh, Mr Peter Lees, Dr Ben Goldacre, and Dr Claire Gerada.
NHS Right Care, NHS Information Centre, NICE, and the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service are also supporting the event.
The Department of Health is looking to new technologies to help lower costs, and recently announced its ‘Maps and Apps’ competition earlier this year, which ranked ideas about new health-based apps from the public.
The purpose of the NHS Hack Day is for technologically savvy doctors, developers, and designers to meet and learn from people in other disciplines they wouldn’t normally meet.
The event also aims to make software that promotes health and to showcase the benefits of open source software, open governance, open data, challenges, and the talent in the SME software development community.
The NHS Hack Day will be on the 26-27th of May at the University of London Union, Malet Street, WC1E 7HY.
If you would like a ticket or to make an enquiry please email carl.reynolds@openhealthcare.org.uk
Ben Adams is the reporter for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and is the DigiBlog site author. He can be contacted via: email or Twitter.
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