Can I first wish you a Merry Christmas, and extend a sincere hope you get some good time off in the next couple of weeks? Try not to eat too many calories if you can and remember – the dog will always appreciate a walk if it all gets a bit too claustrophobic with the relatives in front of the Queen’s Speech.

It’s been a big year for us here – especially in our core NHS market. Let’s wrap up a few of the main trends we saw there, and how it’s helped shape SynApps and our progress over the past 12 months.

Tactical VNA

Fantastic to see so many Trusts coming off the National Programme PACS contracts and making the tactical move to not re-order expensive DICOM platforms but move to VNAs. That way, they’ve got their data back and can keep it in a safe and affordable format. A lot of CCIOs did this without much strategy, and it was the smart move.

Becomes Strategic VNA

Then, a lot embarked on the next equally smart step: now that all that X-ray and image/DICOM data has been repatriated, HIT (health IT) leaders are increasingly looking to exploring using the VNA to work with both that structured but also all that unstructured data . This is almost always under the rubric of the move, set right at the top by the Department of Health itself, to move to a ‘paperless,’ or at least radically digital, NHS by 2018. We’ve been pleased to have been part of such discussions – and, better, to be the chosen means of taking them forward.

Collaboration Emerges As A Key NHS Informatics Theme

Over the year, we were struck by a sea-change in NHS technology. We were expecting to hear a lot about sharing of data – between departments but also, at least tentatively, between different/disparate health and social care teams.

That happened, yes. But better, we heard more and more demand for doing more – to not just share but to actively, proactively, collaborate – and almost always in an open source, XDS way.

The goal was to join up the gaps that have for so long been there in the patient journey, not just through the system but across our lifetimes.

So what starts as an in-house collaboration space naturally soon evolves into a cross-organisational shared space, in the cloud, and with stakeholders, clinicians, social care professionals, starting to look to move data around in ways that best suit the patient.

This is really exciting and important. It’s been amazing to have seen this start and to play our part to help it along. This has to be the best way for the NHS to evolve, and it can solve so many social problems with our ageing society. I expect collaboration to become not just a nice-to-have but a requirement for our NHS projects in 2016.

How about that for a high note to end 2015?

Merry Christmas – and see you soon,

Mark

Mark Winstone is SynApps’s Joint CEO and Sales & Marketing Director