John K Mitchell's Misc Blog

Another IT failure from Central Government

According to an article on the BBC website a large number of Doctors have called for a review into the £6.2bn NHS computer project.
The IT upgrade aims to link up 30,000 GPs to nearly 300 hospitals in an overhaul of the NHS IT network.
Aparently half of the GPs said the "choose and book" online booking system was poor or fairly poor. The poll was completed by 447 hospital doctors and 340 GPs.
In a radio report this evening it was reported that ministers had said other parts of the project were up to 2 years behind schedule, pushing it almost 3 times over budget.
Having working in an IT department of a health authority (admitedly many years ago), involved in IT for over 30 years and had experience of seeing systems designed by Central Government (for example Income Tax Return submissions, Company house return submissions etc) I can quite believe that the reports are more than likely true. The Health Authority I worked for had several extremely good systems but because they had been developed in house they were frowned upon by the Regional Health Authority. Never mind that they did what the usres wanted and that we could transfer data between labs, wards and office staff - they were not designed by Region and therefore could not possibly be good.

As a Coeliac (or celiac in the USA) sufferer I tend to keep an eye open for websites about gluten free food.

Recent, while playing blogshares I came across the gluten free girl blog that made interesting reading.

For those that are not aware gluten is a protein that is found in many cereals including Wheat, Rye and Barley although not in Rice or Corn. The gluten allergy (coeliac disease) is characterised by damage or flattening to all or part of the villi lining the small intestine, this then interferes with the absorption of nutrients. This damage is caused by eating anything that contains gluten.

Ah, I hear you say, so stay off bread, biscuits and cakes and you will be ok. The problem is that I've seen wheat starch in items such as grated cheese, yoghurts, chocolates and even mustard and pepper, never mind sauces and gravy powders.

BlogShares

You may have noticed that there is a link on the left hand side of the page to something called BlogShares.

This is a fantasy stock market where weblogs (blogs) are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in these blogs. The blogs are then valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog. No actual ownership of blogs is transfered. BlogShares is purely a fictional marketplace.

A new player starts the game with 500 BlogDollars (B$) and I'm pleased to say that at the moment I've increased my value on the game to B$1,066,126,015.52 (yes, that's over 1 billion - if only I could do that on the real stock markets).

Why not drop by and have a look - it's great fun (but can be very addictive) and need not cost you any money to play, although you can sign up as a premium member for $15 per year and get extra functionality.

See you there some time!