How to Create a Blueprint for Decommissioning Legacy Data Platforms
A talk presented at Digital Leaders Week by Fiona Hobbs, CTO, Opencast Software and Kirste Worland, Head of Applications, NHS Business Services Authority.
Decommissioning legacy data platforms can be complex, time consuming and costly. In this session, we look at the challenge the NHS Business Services Authority faced with their Common Drug Reference (CDR) and how this was reviewed and improved to save time and make the system more efficient and better for users. We will explain how the decision was reached to build an API data platform, which enabled the data to be opened up and highly searchable instead of living in an elusive on-premise traditional relational database. This also meant that elastic search could be introduced; a huge step forward which significantly improves search speeds. Learn about the innovative approach taken during the discovery phase, where the architect and user researcher worked in tandem to help map and plan a re-usable format. The outcome was that the architectural principles weren’t just specific to this project and could be used in the future for decommissioning other legacy data platforms.