The document summarizes a presentation given by Stuart McCaul, Director - EMEA at Basho Technologies, about how the NHS is using Basho's Riak database to build a new national clinical records system called The Big NHS Computer. The system will store non-clinical records for all NHS patients and allow records to be accessed when clinically necessary. Riak provides high data availability, replication for protection, and ability to scale out on commodity hardware to meet the system's needs of handling over 500 complex messages per second with a zero data loss requirement. Using Riak is expected to save over 200 quality-adjusted life years per year through infrastructure cost savings and improved ability to recover from failures. The procurement process between the NHS and Bash

1. G Cloud Uk Meetup
Stuart McCaul, Director - EMEA, Basho Technologies

2. Saving lives, doing
business with
G-Cloud III
Stuart McCaul, Director - EMEA, Basho Technologies
Connect: @_stu_
2nd October 2013

3. Shhh!
• PR embargo until 8th October

4. The Big NHS Computer
• Keep a record of non-clinical information about every one who is treated by the NHS
• Allow the NHS to run off the NHS Number
• Keep a record for every prescription made by a GP
• And manage its state changes from Prescribe to Payment
• Keep a record of everyone’s current medication and adverse reactions
• And make it available when clinically necessary
• Over 20,000 integrated endpoints
• Over 500 (complex) messages per second
• A “zero data loss” requirement and a 99.9% availability requirement

5. The Problem

6. Failure

7. Riak – good for what?
• Protecting our data
• Through replication
• Through eventual consistency
• Through siblings
• Consistency of performance of Key-Value operations
• We know how many disk seeks are involved in each operation
• It defers activity to smooth performance
• Scaling by adding more nodes
• Disk space
• Volume
• Commodity hardware

8. Riak – good for what?
• The replacement Spine
• Can hit greater volumes
• With up to 90% reduction in response times
• With 99th percentile response times at or below
previous average
• .... with <5% of the hardware costs
• This is in part about allowing us to be lazy about fixing
• And making it easier to recover from failure
• Expecting to save over 200 QALY per annum just on
infrastructure

9. Riak – good for what?
• “In short: using Riak to insure high data availability helps
avoid health risks and in the worst case, patient death.”
- Martin Sumner, NHS HSCIC

10. The deal

11. Procurement surprises
• NHS -> DH -> Cabinet -> DH -> NHS
• 9 Signatories on PO
• DH signed G-Cloud form
• G-Cloud / Basho framework agreement was
reviewed by lawyers at NHS and DH
• 2 year maximum contract
• Process took 3 months

12. Questions?