The UK National Health Service (NHS) could potentially save millions of pounds by switching to open-source software. In addition, the switch could also ensure that data remains safe and integral. This is the view of a University of Bradford academic called Professor Mohammed Amin Mohammed.
Mohammed is founder and principal consultant of the NHS R-community. This initiative has been mentioned in an ongoing government inquiry called the Goldacre Review. The focus of the broader review is with improving safety and security in the use of health service data. In this context, R can be used for a range of topics in health, such as reporting hospital mortality statistics and evaluating interventions.
The output from the Goldacre Review will be responded to in the forthcoming Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, which sets the direction for the use of data in a post-pandemic healthcare system.
Professor Mohammed says: “R is already used by companies and organizations such as Google, Microsoft, Lloyds bank, the BBC, the pharmaceutical and automotive industry, academia and many others in the private sector.”
The official R software environment is an open-source free software environment within the GNU package, available under the GNU General Public License.
The open source software provides data analysis and develop shared solutions to common analytic challenges.
As to why this is the case, Mohammed sees the reason as relating to the software being powerful, versatile, supported by a worldwide community.
Mohammed adds: “If the NHS is to be fit for the 21st Century, it needs to transition to an open-source software model such as R. At the moment, the NHS relies heavily on licensed software but these are often very expensive, come with expensive training courses, offer limited support, and involve restrictions that prohibit sharing and learning.”
In contrast Mohammed explains: “If the NHS was to transition to using R, there is the potential to save millions of pounds in license fees, and training and support – because these would essentially be free. It would also enable the NHS to unlock the power of big data.”
R is open, crowd-sourced and not owned by any private corporation.
The output from the Goldacre Review will be responded to in the forthcoming Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, which sets the direction for the use of data in a post-pandemic healthcare system.
The NHS-R community began in 2018 with funding from the Health Foundation. Health services need to engage with data since big data can be used to streamline and improve some health services. Examples of applications are varied, including the automation of repetitive tasks such as letters to patients, board reports, performance dashboards, and to use machine learning and AI to create new statistical models based on the vast amount of data available to the NHS to support clinical and non-clinical decision making in the NHS.
