Leeds releases portal open source code

Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust has released the open source code related to its open source clinical portal after a successful development phase.

The open source portal, developed with integration service provider ReStart Consulting, provides a single view of patient events and data from key departmental systems.

The successful phase 1 of its development saw integration from five systems to the portal via the trust’s integration engine, using HL7 messaging.

The five systems are iSoft’s PatientCentre patient administration system; the trust’s own Patient Pathway Manager, which is used in the trust’s oncology department, and information from applications provided by Bluespier, Ascribe and EMIS.

Dr Tony Shannon, clinical lead for informatics, said: “We are pleased that the first pilot phase of the Open Portal project has been a useful success.

"The feedback from clinical teams here at the trust is very positive and the pilot project has proven to be both clinically and technically useful.”

The portal is still in pilot phase within the trust but Dr Shannon and his team have now developed a business case to take the portal live.

He said: “We are now seeking to build on this first phase with a second phase, taking this portal live across our trust and building further integration and functionality.”

Releasing the code will allow others to reuse it to build their own portals. Dr Shannon said: “I would welcome other NHS trusts who are now exploring the use of clinical portals to consider building on this open source effort and work with the NHS to progress this opportunity.”

Dr Shannon told EHI that open source had advantages over proprietary applications as it allowed better collaboration within the trust.

He said: “Without that approach we would not have been able to bring in the team working on our in-house oncology system.

"Because it is open source, we can collaborate and everyone can be part of the team. I could not have got them involved if we had bought a proprietary solution.”

Although the open source approach to developing e-health applications is unusual in the UK, it is a movement that is gathering speed internationally.

In the US, for example, the Veterans’ Association has shared the coding for its open source electronic health record, while the US Nationwide Health Information Network Direct project is using open source to develop standards to support secure information sharing between healthcare organisations.

Tony Shannon will be presenting the latest developments of the Open Portal solution as part of an EHI Skunkworks Initiative on “Open Source in the NHS". For more information about the portal see here.