NHS trust CIO: Budget constraints makes agile and DevOps impossible without supplier help

With budgets cut, Bradford NHS Trust CIO Cindy Fedell believes it is impossible to sustain in-house development

Budget constraints in the NHS mean that it is a challenge for trusts to "go agile" and almost impossible to implement DevOps without the assistance of a supplier.

That's according to Cindy Fedell, the CIO of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

"[DevOps] is a tricky thing in the NHS because whenever you start developing you then have to ensure you're able to sustain it and that's always difficult.

"We do some development in-house but we're very careful to limit it to things that are on a short-term basis and things that we know we can't buy because it's not a sustainable model for us," she said.

Fedell believes that the introduction of DevOps would require the Trust's complete focus and added that it would be challenging to sustain something that was created in-house.

"We've got into trouble with that in the past, so we have to do it very carefully. That's the hardest thing in the public sector because every year you're asked to cut your budget so it's hard to continually say you're maintaining something," she stated.

However, while Fedell believes it is necessary for NHS trusts to go agile, she also indicates that a hospital would not be able to do this independently of suppliers.

"You have to spend a lot and keeping it alive becomes difficult over the years. Agile is the way to go and people expect a quick response within the NHS, in particular, so there is a pressure there, but you have to do it with a partner," she explained.

"I don't think I can name a trust that is doing [DevOps]… we're doing things out of necessity, but it's difficult for us to sustain over the years," she added.

The Computing DevOps Summit 2018 is back on 21 March. Attendance is free to qualifying IT leaders and senior IT pros, but places are already going fast. For more information, see Computing's dedicated events website.