NHS Open Source Policies - All Quietly Removed… Part 2

Why It Matters

Without a clear, enforced open‑source strategy, the NHS risks continued overspending on proprietary systems and misses the opportunity to accelerate digital innovation and cost efficiencies across the health service.

Key Takeaways

• NHS England deleted all open‑source policy webpages deliberately
• Organization claims to defer to gov.uk service standard
• Lack of communication left open‑source community uninformed and frustrated
• NHS continues commissioning bespoke software without mandatory open‑source requirements
• Expert urges creation of dedicated open‑source team to reduce costs

Summary

The video revisits the sudden disappearance of NHS England’s open‑source policy pages, confirming that the removal was intentional rather than an accidental outage. NHS England told Digital Health News it was part of a broader web‑refresh and that the organization now relies on the overarching government service standard on gov.uk, which mandates publishing new code as open source unless a clear exemption applies. However, the presenter argues that the NHS has long failed to adopt open‑source practices, continuing to commission bespoke, proprietary software despite the policy’s existence. He highlights Service Standard 12, which requires new code to be open‑sourced, and points out that the NHSX open‑source policy remains online while the main NHS pages have vanished, underscoring a disconnect between policy and implementation. The speaker calls for a transparent communication strategy, a dedicated open‑source team, and a shift toward reusable, community‑driven software to curb escalating costs and improve patient‑centric digital services. He stresses that the current approach—repeatedly buying custom proprietary solutions—has stalled progress, and that embracing open source could align the NHS with industry practices that foster innovation, talent recruitment, and long‑term sustainability.

Original Description

Original EDH episode “NHS Open Source Policies - All Quietly Removed…” https://youtu.be/dQqFNP39sKM

Digital Health News article (big thanks to Jordan Sollof for taking on the story) https://www.digitalhealth.net/2025/12/nhs-england-quietly-removes-open-source-policy-web-pages/

GOV.UK SERVICE STANDARDS

GOV.UK Open Source Guidance “Be open and use open source“ https://www.gov.uk/guidance/be-open-and-use-open-source

GOV.UK Service Standard #12. “Make new source code open” https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard/point-12-make-new-source-code-open

MISSING POLICIES

NHS England Open Source Policy has gone 404 https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/

Wayback Machine archive version https://web.archive.org/web/20250814214104/https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/

NHS TD Open Source Digital Playbook redirects to some Blueprinting stuff now https://transform.england.nhs.uk/key-tools-and-info/digital-playbooks/open-source-digital-playbook/

Wayback Machine archive version https://web.archive.org/web/20241006203825/https://transform.england.nhs.uk/key-tools-and-info/digital-playbooks/open-source-digital-playbook/

NHSX Open Source Policy is still there (for now) https://github.com/nhsx/open-source-policy

WE HAVE AN NHS SERVICE STANDARD

And it does have the same #12 “Make new source code open” https://service-manual.nhs.uk/standards-and-technology/service-standard

An example of what good open source can do: NHS Frontend - a great piece of work in open source by the NHS, which has been reused thousands of times both within and outside of the NHS https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend

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