Darling to shelve NHS IT system

[AtW]

The whole NPfIT is practically trivial according to you.

Indeed, I can't see any complexity - if you do then it is certainly artificial that should be cut out from this very expensive project.

It's not like we are talking about sending humans to Mars, it is a mostly virtual large scale database project that would have been pretty difficult in the 80s, challenging in 90s, but trivial in 2009.

[stek]

I'd imagine the hardware alone would cost more than £10m, when I was there there were over 4000 Sun boxes alone, V890's up to F15k's and no Linux in sight....

In fact - not much Windows apart from desktops and tuliprix...

This whole thing has to have ultra-high availabilty, SLA's are tight as fook and allowed downtime was around 45 mins every three months and hugh penalties for each minute over. ISTR one contractors slippy finger costing £200k one night.....

[AtW]

I'd imagine the hardware alone would cost more than £10m, when I was there there were over 4000 Sun boxes alone, V890's up to F15k's and no Linux in sight....

Sun is so 90s, why would you want to buy it now?

We buy high quality SuperMicro rack servers - excellent value for money. The biggest storage usage will be for images anyway - this can be replicated on multiple clusters, so no point buying ultra expensive systems.

This whole thing has to have ultra-high availabilty, SLA's are tight as fook and allowed downtime was around 45 mins every three months and hugh penalties for each minute over. ISTR one contractors slippy finger costing £200k one night.....

How many minutes Google was down in the last 3 months? For this sort of money you can make a deal with them and get to use some of their datacenters, or they'd license you their technology (from youtube.com for example) to handle high load/storage requirements.

£12 bln buys a lot of stuff if you know where to shop.

[Mr.Whippy]

How many minutes Google was down in the last 3 months?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11...tage_reported/ More than 30 hours for some people with just this one outage.

I cant be bothered to find the others they've had....I've lost access to my gmail a few times.

I heard the figure was £16k/min penalty for any unscheduled outage for the NHS, which means that would've cost a mere £28,800,000 in penalties.....

[AtW]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11...tage_reported/ More than 30 hours for some people with just this one outage.

I cant be bothered to find the others they've had....I've lost access to my gmail a few times.

That's gmail, not core google search (which defines Google, not many other products they have).

gmail is free by the way in case you did not notice - google does not make money there, so their main effort went to making sure core product (search) is ultra fast and dependable.

I'd estimate complexity of Google search being 2 orders of magnitude over what NHS IT project should provide.

[Mr.Whippy]

That's gmail, not core google search (which defines Google, not many other products they have).

Whatever... you asked about google downtime and I provided the answer. Whether its core or not is immaterial.

gmail is free by the way in case you did not notice - google does not make money there

So, they place those targeted adverts for free do they?

I'd estimate complexity of Google search being 2 orders of magnitude over what NHS IT project should provide.

I'd estimate you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

[AtW]

Whatever... you asked about google downtime and I provided the answer. Whether its core or not is immaterial.

Well, it is material.

So, they place those targeted adverts for free do they?

Yes, they give free very high quality searches and put ads up that pays for overall system, not bad service I'd say.

I'd estimate you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

I have a clue at designing large scale databases that cost very little money - they don't cost a lot because I was paying my own money, you'd be suprised how much that stimulates innovation and imagination.

[Doggy Styles]

I worked on the CUI part of the project. It went pretty well.

What I can't remember is what state the existing patient data is in.

What would be the cost of migrating/inputting 60 million patient records to these new database(s)? Then validating them for accuracy and completeness?

It sounds horrendous. You can't afford slip-ups - that will cost lives. I suspect £10 million would soon disappear on the insurance for that alone.

[Mr.Whippy]

Yes, they give free very high quality searches and put ads up that pays for overall system, not bad service I'd say.

I wouldn't say that a 30 hour outage is a good service either... free or not.

[AtW]

What would be the cost of migrating/inputting 60 million patient records to these new database(s)? Then validating them for accuracy and completeness?

It sounds horrendous. You can't afford slip-ups - that will cost lives. I suspect £10 million would soon disappear on the insurance for that alone.

Good question - the first one so far.

I'd say this should be up to people who hold existing information: they'd be given API to store this data in new central database, they'd have to create patients information and import all existing data into it: it will be their responsibility to do so.

What would that result in? Some local contractors contracted to do the job. Are you sold yit?