Service Description
What is Pulpp?

Welcome to the Pulpp Service Description. This is a short guide that explains what Pulpp provides and how with works.

Pulpp (which is really just me - David Mizon) produces useful content (documents, clarifications, advice, and tools) relating to digital transformation in the NHS. It can be thought of as a big library of material that can be freely used, adapted, and repurposed by anyone that I build and curate.

The aim is to offer users access to a central store of open source knowledge they can use to support their organisations…

That supports a community based on open source principles, knowledge sharing, and free collaboration…

To achieve the goal of increasing the accessibility, use, and creation of open source knowledge, foster collaboration, and reduce duplication of effort by public, private, and academic sectors to support the effective and efficient digital transformation of NHS services.

This is not an easy goal but with a strong community, ease of access to information, freedom to reuse, and affordable model, Pulpp has all the right pillars to help find a new way of doing things.

To introduce you to the service I have created some basic questions and answers below:

1. What is it? - Pulpp is an open source information service and knowledge base and community offering, guidance, reusable templates, and a broad array of content that can be used to support digital transformation in the NHS. Content is created from across the community, so unlike traditional consultancy, where you only get the outputs of your requirements, you will receive the outputs from the whole community. This content is curated and made available through a simple wiki and basic tools making its accessible and open. All content is licensed under Creative Commons SA-BY 4.0 so subscribers are free to use the outputs of Pulpp in almost any way including commercially.
2. Who owns Pulpp? - Pulpp is a micro business. It is owned by me (David Mizon). It is not built and owned by a large organisation nor do I have any nefarious agenda. I have created the Pulpp Principles and a suite of governing documents that keep me honest and let the community know who and what Pulpp is for.
3. Why have a community focus? - Pulpp brings together a community of like-minded organisations from public, private, and academic sectors. Many government knowledge bases only allow public sector input. Transformation needs skills and insights from across all sectors and the ability for cross polination of ideas. A community creates a clear focus, goals, and principles, that are bought into by its members which cannot be achieved by a single private entity. The aim of the community is to create a collaboration-first approach to problem solving.
4. What does it cost? - £10,000 (ex. VAT) per year for an organisation wide licence to access the Pulpp repositories and all Pulpp open source content. Discounts are available for micro-businesses and students.
5. What do I get? - Full access to all Pulpp content, knowledge base, and forum. and the option to ask up to 10 specific questions per year to be answered as part of the Pulpp Clarifications Project which gives subscribers a way to direct the focus on Pulpp. Pulpp is designed for its community, by its community.
6. Are there any restrictions? - There are some fair usage restrictions on the number of users that will be given access to the online wiki and forum. This is only to keep things fair while Pulpp is young. I will look to minimise restrictions wherever possible.
7. Why is it needed? - To reduce the barriers to finding the right information from across the web and to reduce the duplication of efforts in finding guidance and support to solve similar issues related to transformation. Unlike traditional consultancy, which often seeks to resell the same guidance and documentation, Pulpp aims to eliminate duplication by sharing all its work with the community. Subscribers pay a smaller fee but get the benefit of input and questions from the whole community.
8. What are the main benefits? - lower consultancy spend. greater collaboration with peers. Lower duplication of effort. Improved accessibility to information. Freedom to use outputs how you want. Pulpp exists to provide free-to-use guidance and documentation to organisations that may otherwise contact an external agency to provide guidance and build documents. Much of this guidance is freely available and based on Government content - the problem is finding the content in the first place. Pulpp aims to lower costs of accessing information and knowledge as well as collaborate with a wider community to ensure efforts are not duplicated. For example, if a Supplier has a good "lesson learned" from a project, it can share that with the community without others having to make the same mistake. Perhaps you work for a Trust that just created a strong set of requirements for a system. Those can be shared and built upon by the whole community saving time, effort, and money.
9. Who can join? - At the moment Pulpp is not for everyone. It is targeted at the NHS, its suppliers, and academic institutions working in health and care. It is primarily available to organisations. If you are an individual please contact us.
10. How do I access it? - Pulpp is built using simple, tested technologies, most of which are open source wherever possible. For online use, there is a wiki handling the main knowledge base, a forum for discussions, and after that I rely mostly on email (because everyone has it and sometimes you don't want to visit a website). Pulpp is also keen to have offline versions and for this we revert to good old fashioned plain text to give subscribers the least vendor lock-in possible. For developmental versions of documents I use GitHub and can provide access to those wishing to collaborate directly.
11. How can I use it? - Pulpp outputs are open source. This is the major benefit of the service. Anything that is created in Pulpp can be used in almost any way, including changed and adapted, passed on, or even sold. This means that Pulpp is extremely useful for finding guidance and document templates which can be downloaded and tailored to your needs without issue. Pulpp is designed for freedom.

The Pulpp Wiki is the cornerstone of Pulpp's work. This is where all outputs from the various Pulpp projects are collated. A wiki is a type of knowledge management system that can support collaborative creation and management of resources. Wikipedia is the worlds biggest wiki and something you will be familiar with.

All my work, the questions, answers, guidance, document reviews, template documents and Pulpp projects will have a space on the wiki and can be viewed from anywhere on any device.

I chose a wiki because of its ability to create linked content to anywhere in the site (think about all those blue links on Wikipedia). This helps users find information organically and allows me to get rid of a rigid hierarchical storage structure. In a wiki, content can be organised freely and linked to create interesting pathways.

This was vital in my designs. I believe it is impossible to find information that you don't know exists (this is why libraries and book shops categorise by subject). Pulpp helps you find information organically and shows you content you never knew you needed.

I have chosen to build Pulpp in DocuWiki. It is lighter weight, offers all the core features of MediaWiki (the software used to run Wikipedia) and importantly runs purely on plain text files. This makes hosting the wiki very easy but also makes its replication very simple - as a customer you can have your own version of the content and even run your own wiki.

Perhaps you really like the idea of a collaborative knowledge share at your Trust and wish you could have a single solution for your internal knowledge and Pulpp's content. Why not implement Pulpp on premises and build your own pages, thoughts, and content? If you would like help with this just get in touch.

This is the first Pulpp Project and will provide users with a way to direct what content I create. The Pulpp Clarifications Project is a perfect example of the benefits of shared outputs that Pulpp offers.

With shared outputs subscribers get far more out than they put in making this model extremely good value for money. Just to protect those early adopters I have committed to deliver a minimum of 100 responses (I will pretend there are 10 subscribers at all times - after 10 subscribers thing might have to change because there's only one of me!)

Subscribers will get 10 questions per year they can ask. Each month a new set of questions will be answered and sent out to all users and filed in the wiki. Subscribers won't just get the answers to their own questions but to everyone else's too. If the same question gets asked I'll only answer it once and credit the requesters with another question.

Questions can be about anything related to NHS transformation. It may be that a response requires a template document, some guidance, or a link to the right location. The beauty of the clarification process is that Pulpp is directed to create useful content you want and can use right away.

For your subscription you will receive:

The following service description is accurate for 2025. It is subject to ongoing review and may alter.

1. 10 bespoke questions per year as part of the Pulpp Clarifications Project. These can be about any thing you want relating to commercial, procurement, or digital transformation in the NHS. (No more than 2 questions per month)
2. Access to all the questions from all other subscribers - minimum of 10 responses per month.
3. Simple email updates right into your inbox - there is no need to visit the website to see the latest updates.
4. Access to Plain Text Pulpp - you can run your own version of the Pulpp repository on your device, without the need for internet access, using our plain text version of the Pulpp solution. This is perfect for those that want to adapt the repository or store it in a team space for ease of access.
5. Access to the Pulpp Wiki for 25 users - the entire repository is made available in an easy-to-use online form. Users will also be able to download all the files that make up the wiki to create their own.
6. Access to the Private Pulpp Discourse Forum - I operate a discourse forum where I can provide direct support and answer questions. The forum is also a great place to start discussions with like-minded community members. The forum allows for private spaces and spaces for public, private, and academic sectors to collaborate.
7. Continuous Development - Access to the ongoing outcomes of the Pulpp Projects (see below)
8. Direction and Input - An ability to support and define the direction of Pulpp as part of its founding community members.

Pulpp pricing is very simple. There is a single flat rate for all subscribers. There are discounted rates for micro organisations and students.

For more information on 'Why Pulpp Isn't Free' please see the About Pulpp page.

Pulpp pricing is also governed by a number of principles. These principles govern how pricing is calculated. Pulpp is a young organisation and looking to ensure it remains value for money. I am also looking to investigate other funding methods e.g. sponsorship, which would allow Pulpp to be made freely available to subscribers. Updates on pricing will always be made via the website and communicated directly via normal communications.

Pulpp Projects are longer term pieces of work that I am undertaking on specific areas of interest. They are spaces where I am either developing a new solution that fits in with the Pulpp ethos or collating a specific set of data.

At this moment in time there are a number of Pulpp Projects in beta. For more information you can visit the individual project pages:

Pulpp Electronic Services Information

NHS contracts have required Electronic Services Information to be provided for years but this clause is often neglected. ESI is a simple register of supplier details and product descriptions. It's purpose is to allow buyer's to build an internal catalogue of all their solutions and options for further solutions from suppliers. A public buyer should check this register before a procurement to understand if it has already procured similar services. Pulpp's ESI project aims to standardise a template and build a free-to-all register of supplier products that saves accessing individual websites to find basic summary information. This acts as a 'front door' for buyers looking to procure new solutions or just understand the full portfolio of products from a supplier.

Pulpp Bookmarks

an easy to use and organised bookmark file that can be imported into any browser and provide access to a wide range of digital resources. Think of it a bit like a yellow pages for your web browser collated and curated for the Pulpp Community. I also create an index file that provides a basic introduction and insight into the the website and how it confirms to Pulpp principles. Think of this a little like a modern 'Whole Earth Catalog'.

Pulpp Library

This is the extension to the Pulpp Wiki that works with community members to build content. The Pulpp Wiki is built from content I create in response to clarifications and other topics I find interesting. To ensure the wiki remains relevant and useful it shall collate community content such as lessons learnt, blueprints, document templates, and requirements. Each of these workstreams will be built using a repeatable, documented process and standardised documents so you can run your own versions of these projects and adopt them in your organisation whilst still being able to share findings with others.

Commercial Semantic Versioning

Having worked with many organisations and shared documents between multiple organisations I can safely say that document management and version control represent a real challenge for organisations. Keeping track of documents seems simple but the underlying process and principles are rarely understood. Semantic Versioning is a standard that allows version of a codebase to be understood in terms of the impact of changes. Commercial Semantic Versioning is the same thing but for legal, commercial, and business documents. Not only does the version number identify a document but it describes the degree of change between versions.

Plain Text Public Sector

This is a simple set of adoptions and justifications for switching public sector services over onto plain text solutions. Plain text solutions reduce vendor lock in, can be converted to more file types, and offer greater opportunities for pre-existing technologies to improve productivity. Plain text can be greener, simpler, and more open - all things that are useful in the public sector.

Clinikeys - The Open Clinical Hotkey Standard

Core clinical information systems, such as EPRs, offer similar standard functions; however, features are often implemented in different locations within a system and require different actions or key clicks to access. Clinikeys is a standard designed to offered industry agreed hot-keys (think about Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for 'copy' and 'paste') that link to the same location in a system. This allows users to move between systems and, even without training, locate key system features through a hot-key. No matter what system and how it looks, users will have a familiar and accessible way to reach basic functionality.

Open Contract Scoring Standard

The OCSS is a standard designed to offer users the ability to score a commercial agreement based on a pre-defined scoring mechanism. This allows for like-for-like comparisons of commercial agreements and allows for a difference in 'contract score' to be measured. This is useful in procurements of reviewing changes to contracts. The standard is designed to be operated by legal and commercial professionals but provides a plain-English way in which commercial strengths and weaknesses can be described.

Pulpp Simple Social Value

Social Value is a mandatory but under-implemented procurement obligation. Many buyer's don't know how to procure and evaluate social value and many suppliers have a very weak understanding of the practical application of social value. This project aims to simplify social value and offer processes and template documents for building a strong, repeatable, and sustainable social value delivery solution that supports buyer's and suppliers to deliver meaningful change to the communities they serve.

A subscription applies to an organisation, so please ensure your organisation doesn't already have a subscription. Some aspects of the subscription are subject to fair use. This includes access to the forum and wiki.

Initially, organisations will be allowed 25 active users on the wiki and forum (25 on both). These limits will increase over time but I want to ensure that no single organisation can 'take over' the community with sheer volume of users.

Users can be switched out at any time.

Whilst access to the wiki and other features will be limited, all content is made accessible to the purchasing organisation. You are more than welcome to create your own repository on an internal intranet or even install your own version of the wiki. This is the beauty of open source!

Pulpp is subject to use according to a Terms of Service, Licence Terms, and the Pulpp Guidelines and Principles. The focus of these documents is to offer the utmost clarity on all things to do with your relationship with Pulpp, the wider community, and to the open source licences Pulpp uses. These terms are version controlled and freely available for the utmost transparency.

If you have any questions about any of the pages linked in this section please get in touch and I will happily walk you through them.

If you have made it this far thank you for your interest in Pulpp. We have limited spaces for the initial launch of Pulpp, so if you are interested in accessing the service and having a say in the direction of Pulpp please consider joining here.