Nhs network security

debitcardmayhem

unforeseen wrote: »

You do know that Citrix boxes tend to be running on Windows embedded don't you?. Still need licences.

Oh and not forgetting that you still have to pay Citrix for licences based on the number of users

Oh and I believe Citrix still requires JAVA JRE , but I can't be sure, but thats another 'mare for XP/any win

[Deleted User]

DavidP24 wrote: »

You are ABSOLUTELY right, that is the ConGov goal, I was talking to a senior chap in NHS a few weeks back, reckons in real terms they have taken £30bn out of NHS. They have done most of this by not increasing in line with inflation and the increased population.

The ConGov also screwed up by dismantling the SHA's they paid off these shared services, paid £50k redundancies only for the same people to be re-employed by GP's, the difference being that the GP's are now not benefiting from that management being shared. So there might be 5x as many employed

PFI is one the nastiest things in the NHS and yes it is another reason Blair should have been arrested. It has virtually bankrupted some trusts.

If you ask any high earning salesman or effective accounts receivable clerk they will tell you their secret is to work on the big numbers first. PFI is the obvious target to make savings in the NHS and the way to do it is for breach of contract, these contracts fit in a filing cabinet with 4 drawers but there have been many areas where they are not performing. Even buying them out makes financial sense.

When you look at these 415 Trusts, at the top you see boards of Directors, Chairmans and a massive management structure all making the same decisions 415 times. The obvious thing to do here is to merge Trust executives, county by county, region by region, these are the highest paid but honestly some of them are useless and totally dependent on layers of managers.

My merging the management you would free up the clinicians, give them more say over how their departments are run. In some Trusts they split the secretarial admin roles in a programme to cut staff grades from 4 to 2. The result was a Doctor now has to ask 5 different people what is happening with their patient, oh and it did not save any money because they had to employ temps. Go to any job website and you will see NHS roles that make no sense at all, they are invented to deal with crazy rules and targeting.

To understand this mentality you have to compare how the NHS deals with running late vs how a private medical service that has been outsourced does under the same rules. So the NHS service is running say 30m late, so every patient is not seen on time and is inconvenienced. What the private service does it pluck two or three out of the queue and re-arranges to see them another day or at the end of the day. They do the same for surgeries and it just makes their stats look good.

I have never liked the fact that it is the NHS that trains Doctors through Teaching hospitals and programmes within hospitals, yet the private hospitals make no contribution. They poach staff and steal doctors for several days a week. The impact of this is that the Hospital does not have the staff so they have to outsource and sometimes even rent to the very same organisations who are nicking their staff. The NHS is then forced to use agency staff who are paid way more.

Just to be clear, it was Blair who made NHS organisations price everything so he could justify outsourcing services, he privatised more than Thatcher.

I would solve this by limiting working outside the NHS for 25 years, I would make it illegal to work several days for NHS and several for private, so often a Doctor is late for NHS work because of their private clinics.

Even then I would put an increased employer NI obligation to pay back for that training, this would also apply to Doctors who are self employed. I would cease this practice of renting out wards or theatres which would have the impact of building new hospitals in terms of capacity.

I would stop all these Hospital closure plans, if you are in any doubt about the future of hospitals where you live, look for Maternity and A&E being closed or moved or changed, these are the only services with a legal obligation. Once they move them they can close a hospital.

Most Trusts have lost capacity with short term finance gained by selling their land off, now they have not even got room for staff to park, they are telling Nurses to walk or take the bus before and after a 12 hour shift that may finish at 1am. While the executive of course have plenty of parking spaces! I would buy back that housing, use some of it for staff and some to regain what was lost.

The problem is the turkeys who run the NHS at senior levels will never vote for Christmas so they throw front line services and clinicians under the bus.

Meanwhile the ConGov want people to hate the NHS so that they can outsource more services in return for non exec Directorships years later.

On one level I disagree with you making it political.

But then I read the whole post and Totally agree with you.

System

Well I hear the call....

Linux thin client on a Raspberry Pi solves so many problems.

http://rpitc.blogspot.co.uk/
https://winterminal.com/

and starts quite a few arguments.

Uxb

On Linux
The city of Munich in 2004 swapped to Linux to save money etc
They then found they had to spend more in software development cost to make Linux work properly than they ever saved in MS corporate licences.

Ever since 2014 rumblings have been heard that the city has finally had enough and in dumping Linux in the Trash bin.
This is the latest update in the never ending saga.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/13/munich_may_dump_linux_for_windows/

DavidP24

I never worry about the OS, to me it is about the Applications, in the NHS these are a combination of Central Patient Admin Systems which are fed into by Clinical Systems (some aged) via HL7 messaging and other interfaces along with specialist software that interfaces with medical equipment. Then there are national systems.

There should be a very limited requirement to use Office software as the goal is to have the clinical systems generate 99% of correspondence.

I know nothing about Munich except what the article refers to; that they will not start tendering till November, the thing is fuelled by devolution to the smaller regional areas, which I imagine do not have the Linux expertise but can probably get by on windows. They are looking to develop a new windows based client by 2021 with a uniform software for Office, Browsing and PDF etc

To me Linux or Windows are just containers in a business, we are all brought up on Windows so there is a great saving in training, which is why I am surprised that most Desktops in Linux are only skin deep when it comes to emulating. They do not need to do that much, just develop a Win7 clone.

They had better do it soon because Microsoft is moving to software as a service with forced updates and no new versions.

Sicard

Stand by your beds:

Major cyber attack could come on Monday, experts warn



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/major-cyber-attack-could-come-monday-experts-warn/

Pound

woody2234 wrote: »

Could the NHS have a stand alone network and not connected to the Global Internet for all there computers but also a separate computer in each NHS building for staff to check things like BBC and other websites and also people have smartphones these days which they can connect to Global Internet if they need to

Yeah, sure. But you know the NHS use the Internet for a lot more than look at BBC's website right? e.g. I order my prescriptions by email. How would I do that if each building has only one computer connected to the internet that's used by staff to browse the internet?

chunter

Many thanks to DavidP for his insights on this.
What we have on the tv is lots of stupid politicians (and others) trying to blame someone else, without any particular knowledge of how and why it happened.
I suspect the one thing they'll not talk about is the amount of money that needs to be spent to prevent such obvious vulnerabilities been exploited.

Jivesinger

DavidP24 wrote: »

They had better do it soon because Microsoft is moving to software as a service with forced updates and no new versions.

All those machines with forced updates were safe from this particular malware though.
Is that really such a terrible thing?

Pound

Jivesinger wrote: »

All those machines with forced updates were safe from this particular malware though.
Is that really such a terrible thing?

Some companies turn off automatic updates because people would come into work one morning and find Internet Explorer 6 which is the only browser which works with a business critical legacy system has been upgraded to the latest version causing the entire company to grind to a halt until IT can work out how to revert back. Instead updates are done in a controlled and tested way so they know everything will still work.