Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

Ian Pearson , a graduate in theoretical physics, who worked for BT as a "futurologist", gave a well-received talk on gadgets and technologies of the future to hundreds of IT, security and finance delegates on the Aurora cruise ship recently.   

He spoke of IT security threats from smart bacteria, gadgets which are installed in the skin, soaring tax rates which precipitate the emigration of graduates to low-tax economies, oil at $30 a barrel, and the reversal of globalization.

And he doesn't take himself too seriously. He told delegates to the City IT, IT Security and Finance Directors' Forum on board the Aurora:

"I study the future but I don't try to predict it with 100% accuracy. I am not like Mystic Meg. I am an engineer. I keep abreast with what's happening in engineering. I know what Sony, Nokia or BT will be bringing out in two to three years time.

"I look at the engineering basis for what happening and extrapolate from that, and try to figure out what gadgets you'll have in your pockets, briefcases and desktop in 10-15 years.  And how you'll use technology to knock socks off the competition.

"Once you figure out how people will use technologies in their businesses and everyday lives, you get a pretty good view of what the future holds. Studying technology, you can get 85% accuracy over 10 years. I hope that sounds impressive. As a reality check 85% accuracy means that 15% of the following presentation is complete and utter crap."

What Barts and The London NHS Trust called a "major incident" - the spread of the Mytob computer virus to a network of nearly 5,000 PCs - was entirely avoidable.

An independent report on the management's response to the incident goes before the trust's board today. Although trust's anti-virus software was updated daily, some PCs did not have it configured properly. So the virus was let in through the back door, said the trust.

Link:

Virus attack at London hospitals was "entirely avoidable" - Computer Weekly website

London Hospitals hit by computer virus - Graham Cluley, Sophos

Mytob and the NHS - Eset site

Mytob-infected emails - Neil Turner's blog

Did suspected Zotob Hacker write Mytob worm? - Information Week

Mytob worm domindates virus charts - from 2005

Congratulations to NCR Corporation and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London: they've introduced something apparently simple but important: a hospital kiosk where patients can register the fact that they've turned up. The information given at the "MediKiosk" will prepare patients for their appointments and in time reduce queuing.

It's the sort of thing you'd have expected every hospital to have had for years. And it's proof of innovation beyond the NPfIT.

The Medikiosk is not just good for patients. Everytime patients register at the kiosk they are asked to record any change of address. If there is a change, the kiosk's software updates hospital systems. GPs do not always notify hospitals of changes of address.

Barts and The London NHS Trust, as an early adopter of the NPfIT Care Records Service, has responded at length to an investigation by Computer Weekly and The Guardian into the Trust's IT problems.

The Trust lost track of hundreds of patients. Gradually it is finding their details on a waiting list which had been hidden. By the time their details are discovered, patients have already missed the Government's waiting time targets.

Barts has faced a backlog of more than 2,100 patients who should have been treated within 18 weeks. The Government has promised that patients would be treated within 18 weeks of being referred by a GP.    

Several Primary Care Trusts in London, which pay for patients to be treated at Barts, have formally complained to Barts. The PCTs have themselves breached Government waiting time targets because their patients have gone untreated by Barts. 

This is from a report to the board of Newham PCT on the problems at Barts:

"On 18 weeks, the PCT was not meeting the target due to the data problem at Barts and the London Trust [BLT]. BLT had the worst data backlog in London. The Director was looking at Newham University Hospital Trust capacity and whether transferring work from BLT was feasible for next year [2009/10] ..."

An unscientific poll of a very small number of end-users of new Windows-based systems being installed as part of the £7bn Defence Information Infrastructure indicates that 31% of them rate the new technology as better than what they had before.

The poll is on the Army Rumour Service which has hosted a long-running and generally well-informed debate on progress and problems with the DII network.

Some of those taking part in the debate have been employees of the EDS-led Atlas consortium, which is helping the Ministry of Defence to deliver the DII. Their comments on the Army Rumour Service, if true, are enlightening.

The total votes on whether the DII systems are better or worse than existing systems is only 110. This is a tiny sample given that the number of terminals being installed in the DII project runs into tens of thousands. Still, it's a qualified vote of confidence in the Atlas consortium.

Not everyone thinks of Amazon, Google, eBay, and Yahoo as key IT suppliers to business but that will change, according to Ian Osborne, a senior executive at Intellect.

He gave a thought-provoking talk to the Numara software "Engage Public Sectror Forum" in Central London on Cloud Computing and SaaS [software as a service], developments which will lead to a "new wave of business innovation".

He said that Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Microsoft as the major cloud providers have infrastructures of hundreds of thousands of servers which will rise to millions in time.

Tests of Germany's first-generation electronic health cards and doctors' "health professional cards" have run into problems.  The plan is said to involve the construction of world's largest private key infrastructure (PKI) to allow 80 million health cards and health professional cards to check each other for authenticity.