Let these people do their work (Score 1)

Hi, I work as a doctor in the NHS in the UK and over here we can't do what you propose. The main problem here would be connecting your server to the NHS network. I know of a senior consultant (the equivalent of the US attending physician) who was disciplined for connecting his own computer to the NHS network. Another problem would be that IT would not be able to control your iPhones or whatever remotely, so if you lose one with confidential data, they would not be able to delete the data remotely. In my hospital we wanted email/calendar/dictation on the go, we asked the nice IT people and they set this up with Blackberries. This works well. The way we organised this was through the hospital's IT/IG group. When something does not work, when the dictation client needs to be reinstalled, when we don't know what we are doing we ask them and they do know and are very helpful. We look after the patients, they look after the computers. They backup everything. Say your hospital agreed to let you have your little server. Would you be doing the backups and help people get their data back when something goes wrong? Are you going to give your colleagues your mobile number so they can ring you whenever they have a problem? Would this interfere with whatever it is that you normally do at work? Don't bother. It is going to be a major headache even if your hospital agrees to let you do this. Regards