[log in to unmask],Net wrote at 07:19 on 25/03/98
about "RE: use of email in general practice":
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>Notes provides a proprietary environment which has excellent security.
It also
>provides a Internet gateway with good security features and you can
use a
>browser as the client rather than the proprietary notes client with
minimal
>loss of functionality.
>
>Notes is primarily used in the big corporate environment. (We have a
big
>pan-European Notes systems) and it strikes me that the cost and effort
>involved in setting it up makes it inappropriate in a typical GP
environment.
>Also my understanding is that you will still need to install some soft
of
>firewall technology to get adequate isolation between you internal
network and
>the Internet.
All true...but
Considering the NHS as a big corporate environment, a bias I suspect
successive waves of senior civil servants will continue to exhibit,
Notes seems not a bad idea. (Mind you, the local HA seem to have
developed the opinion that the success of Microsoft Exchange as a
standard for NHS comms is assured. I couldn't comment - especially
now they seem to have got it to go again)
The BMA has adopted Notes and is rolling out connections - I don't
know if they will get as far as me but they might.
I suspect that one could define a patient record in Notes and if the
whole NHS, hospitals and general practices and Trusts and so on,
were running Notes, a distributed system would be at least
theoretically possible. Just a thought.
PCGs with 50 GPs (200 ish if Leeds get their way) and groups of PCGs
sharing common admin hubs, IT support teams and other facilities
might be thought to be nudging the big corporate environment, not so
much on size as on the number of branches.
Other systems exist which are capable of tackling these tasks,
including FirstClass; Exchange; SQL Anywhere - but Notes has a track
record and the convergence toward the common browser interface is
very encouraging. I think the Peterborough experience is one which
the NHS should see as very valuable, and i wonder if some account of
it eg why Notes was chosen over other systems, how it is being used
and so on, could be exposed for the rest of us.
--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley
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