Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
63/324 page 365
![23 April 1996] [Continued Lord Butterworth contd.]} (Mr Gavin) Yes. This has a broader band capability which is combining CampusWorld, CampusVision and also the downloading of educational CD Roms from a remote server site to a range of schools so that pupils can now have on-line access to CD Rom material. We are very active in designing and testing these types of services. In relation to CampusWorld this is now a national service with several thousand schools already members of CampusWorld. 521. To what extent have these experiments caused you to be involved in the teaching of core subjects, the teaching of subjects in the National Curriculum? (Mr Gavin) Very involved in terms of providing material to support the National Curriculum. This obviously involves us having key expert groups skilled in the National Curriculum advising us and in many cases supplying to us the relevant content that is appropriate for National Curriculum studies. We do develop these content based services very closely in line with National Curriculum requirements. They are meant to be an aid to the teacher in the real curriculum based teaching environment. 522. The materials do exist, do they, in history or mathematics or physics? (Mr Gavin) Some exist, some we have to commission the creation of. Out of the 18,000 pages, for example, that we carry within CampusWorld a sizeable proportion we _ have _ specifically commissioned from teachers, academicians and authors who have created in response to the express needs of our expert teacher user groups. (Dr Rudge) CampusWorld is not a trial, by the way, but a service that we offer. There are over 2,000 schools signed up now and we hope to get 8,000 on the service by the end of MArch 1997. Some of the others are trials. Lord Flowers 523. What routine use do they make of the services that you provide? (Mr Gavin) To give you an idea, out of about 2,000 or so schools we are currently receiving something around 70,000 accesses per teaching day to the service which starts to tell us from the regularity of pattern that these schools are actually using this, primarily during the day but we do notice a certain level of usage off hours and during holiday periods which clearly relates to teachers using this as part of their preparation to assist them. Lord Haskel 524. I just wanted to ask how you charge for CampusWorld? (Mr Gavin) In a couple of ways. We offer the customer the possibility of merely having access to the walled garden itself where the charge is on a monthly basis of approximately £12 per month per school, or aiternatively they can choose to have access to the broader Internet as well where there is a monthly total charge of approximately £22 per month to provide the walled garden but also the capability of seeking out other educational related material on the broader Internet. (Dr Rudge) The telephone charges are in addition to that! I would not want to mislead you. (Mr Gavin) But all at local rate. Baroness Hogg 525. Just one small supplementary on that and then I would like to come back after that to HealthNet. To give us some idea of the scale, how would the use of CampusWorld compare with the use of Encarta? (Mr Gavin) In today’s terms, since CampusWorld has only been going for six months, I would anticipate in relation to the number of Encarta copies sold that we are at a lower level of use. I do not specifically have those figures to hand. 526. Could I take you then to HealthNet. We had some evidence from the Department of Health on the NHS Net. These terms seem to overlap a little. The description we were given there was of a number of network providers being engaged in this exercise and indeed it being important that a number of network providers are engaged in that their ability to negotiate on price and secure keen prices for GP fundholders in particular or others at below hospital level who are engaged in networks was very important. Would you care to comment? You described it as your HealthNet. (Mr Gavin) This is our particular HealthNet. I was not intending to imply that other people would not likely compete and establish their particular comparable services. It is a service where we have taken the financial risk in establishing this network capability and are now actively offering it to hospital trusts, to GPs and to other entities within the health community. We think in terms of the rates that are charged, in terms of the features, in terms of the fire wall, security and protection, it is a very competitive offering. That is not to say that other companies cannot make the same commercial decisions to offer a comparable network to compete with us. We have built the network structure and it is up to us to market that network structure specifically into the health community in as far as various customers are willing to take those connections. 527. What share of the market do you feel you have today or is the market still too infant? (Mr Gavin) The market is very infant. The market share will be very misleading. The bigger consideration in fact is that the number of organisations currently using such activity is very, very small but we believe will grow very substantially. Lord Flowers 528. The doctors make an enormous fuss about the importance of confidentiality of medical information, patient records and so on, whether it is justified or not Iam somewhat doubtful but anyway they make a great fuss, so you have to provide it? (Mr Gavin) Yes. 529. The question is what is the additional cost of providing security to the standard that they require?](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218631_0063.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
