PRESS RELEASE
Release date: 20th April 2016
Pioneering NHS Code4Health platform released to Open
Source community
The building blocks used to build NHS England's pioneering Code4Health programme have been made publicly available under an Open Source license and offer other projects and communities a head start with rapid application development in the sector.
Flexibase was first used commercially in 1995 and has now evolved to version 11, becoming a key component of the recent NHS England Code4Health platform. It has been released as Open Source at a time when the Open Source community is actively seeking new enterprise -grade and professional frameworks to enable fast and robust delivery of contemporary web applications.
The
platform is built upon the Perl programming language, which has long been
a key development tool for Open Source technologies and distributions. Perl is
widely used, particularly in the finance and telecoms sectors due to its core
strengths of data processing and rapid development. This makes Perl a perfect
match not only for healthcare applications and services, but for any
enterprise-level systems requiring innovation, reliability, and a fast time to
market.
Flexibase is just one of many Open Source projects contributing to Code4Health, a project aimed towards stimulating innovation in the NHS and encouraging clinicians and community groups to get involved in building applications to deliver a sustainable UK healthcare infrastructure. The project enables clinicians to work with technical and non-technical community groups to design, build and develop applications according to their needs. Flexibase is already available on the GitHub public code repository and will shortly be available on Docker hub which enables a user with no prior programming knowledge to install and run the full application in seconds.
Managing Director of OpusVL, Stuart J Mackintosh, recently delivered a talk at the Medetel international healthcare conference in Luxembourg, reporting on progress with the Apperta and Code4Health programmes in the UK, and is also writing a feature article on the subject for the Open Source Observatory, part of Joinup.eu.
He said of the framework: “Flexibase has long been a tool that has enabled OpusVL to deliver robust applications quickly. It is built with Open Source components and in the spirit of Open Source, deserves to be handed back to the community to enable others to gain the benefit whilst further enhancing the capabilities of the Flexibase framework. Flexibase was developed to fill the gap of business-ready software components that address the common needs demanded by every commercial project. It has played such a key role in the Code 4 Health project because it enabled rapid delivery of a robust platform that can integrate with independent applications built by many people, and will adapt to meet the as yet unknown future needs of the customer.
The security of Flexibase has already been assured as the platform has been the target of professional security auditing by global cyber-security specialist firm NCC Group, to service OpusVL customers in the financial and retail sectors.
Although managed by Apperta who in turn are governed by clinicians and NHS England, Cod 4Health is based on communities including front-line NHS workers, suppliers and anyone who wants to be part of the development of improved use of technology in the sector. The project, which was launched in 2012, has become an ongoing programme promoting openness, skills and collaboration across the NHS and incubating such applications as OpeneObs, OpenEyes and OpenMinds.
Ends -
About Opus VL
Established in 1999, OpusVL is a
leading Open Source specialist implementer and the primary UK Odoo integration
partner. The company works with businesses in both the private and public
sectors, implementing business management systems and associated services.
For further information, please contact:-
Editorial – Lauren Westley, Opus
VL on 01788 298450, or John Edden, Bridge PR & Media Services on 024 76
520025, or e-mail john@bridgepr.co.uk.