Funding needed for openGPSoC

The people behind a scheme to develop an open source GP clinical system are in talks with providers about raising £3m in funding to kickstart the project.

The openGPSoC team want to create an open source primary care system to allow better interoperability. They got together with GPs, developers and industry at an informal meeting on Saturday to discuss how they could make it work and where to begin.

The meeting was attended by representatives from several healthcare bodies and industry including; NHS Direct, Connecting for Health, First Databank, Cerner, INPS and the British National Formulary.

Ewan Davis, founder of the Healthcare App Network for Development and Innovation and one of the brains behind the project, told eHealth Insider there had been some very positive outcomes of the event.

“We’re not in the position to name names at this stage, but we are talking to a number of people about funding.”

He added that they were still in the early stages and had a long way to go.

“We’re still struggling to find resources. We need something in the region of £3m to make this work.

“We need someone to help us fund the core development of the open software that enables those new business models.”

Davis added that the event gave them a clearer view of what direction they are going in. The idea is to collaborate with industry and create a friendly new economy where there is room for proprietary solutions to work alongside open source.

“We want to create a vibrant new movement that wants to do things differently and work with a broader movement.

“We want to see organisations that can work with partners and deliver those solutions to general practices.

“People don’t realise how difficult it is to deliver the real promise from that on the ground. We have to build a sustainable business model around delivering open solutions and in order to do that we have to find ways of working with proprietary vendors.”

Hildegard Franke, project manager at INPS, attended the event and told EHI that although the company had some concerns about open source, it wants to show it is open for collaboration.

“We are not the enemy and we want to show that. There’s room for as all to work together,” she said.

“There’s some concern in our company about the rhetoric of this. Let’s be real about it, there’s a bit of naivety about what can be achieved.”

Dr Marcus Baw, a locum GP and founder of the OpenGPSoC Project said: “What we want to get out of this is an open GP system, but probably more than that it’s an open architecture.

Dr Baw introduced the idea at an NHS Hack Day held in September where he got an enthusiastic response.

He then teamed up with Tactix4 director and software developer Rob Dyke and Ewan Davis, to create the openGPSoC Project.

“It was a successful event and there was a general consensus that there’s a need and an opportunity to do this,” said Davis.