Talking pill bottles read out their own labels
Pharmacies in Northern California have started to stock talking prescription bottles which aim to help elderly or partially sighted patients by reading out label information at the touch of a button. The bottles, which go by the name ‘Rex’, contain a voice chip, battery and a speaker. When dispensing, the pharmacist inserts the bottle into the recording dock, which connects […]
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SHA sets up data warehouse for PBC
A strategic health authority has set up online access to patient data for its 15 primary care trusts and 330 GP practices to support practice-based commissioning. NHS South Central SHA’s new service, the Thames Valley Data Warehouse, will hold data on more than 2.2 million patients taken from the SHA’s existing databases and from September […]
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BMA implements single sign-on system
The British Medical Association have implemented an enterprise-wide single sign-on (ESSO) system to simplify login procedures for staff working in the office and from home. The OneSign ESSO system, which was supplied by Massachusetts-based authentication management company Imprivata, was piloted at the beginning of the year and now has been rolled out across the organisation’s […]
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CfH looking for PCTs to trial summary record
NHS Connecting for Health is looking for primary care trusts to become early adopters for the NHS Care Records Service summary record. The agency wrote to all PCTs last week seeking expressions of interest to be early adopter sites, which it says will assess “several key concepts” associated with the summary record. These include the implied consent model […]
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Bedford Hospital gets remote access
Scalable Networks, a provider of secure network solutions, has announced the completion of a remote access solution for up to 1,500 staff Bedford Hospital NHS Trust. The first phase of the remote access system has already been rolled out to clinical staff, including pharmacists and radiologists at the hospital. The remote access solution should be […]
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Sage moves into healthcare IT market
The UK’s largest technology company and supplier of accounting software, Sage, has announced the purchase of Florida-based Emdeon Practice Services for £297m with a view to setting up a new division for healthcare software. Kevin Cameron, chief executive officer of Emdeon, said: "We are very please to announce today’s transaction with Sage… We are also […]
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Survey says practices not receiving activity data for PBC
Almost 70% of GP practices have received only partial or no activity data from their primary care trust to take on practice-based commissioning, according to a survey conducted by the Improvement Foundation. The survey of 395 practices across England found that 11 per cent of practices have received no activity data from their PCT and […]
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Leicestershire PCTs saving approx £2m from clinical IT
Health software supplier Ethitec has calculated that the six primary care trusts in Leicestershire are making efficiency savings worth the equivalent of £2m a year through their use of its Tiara9 clinical information system for allied health professions. The savings are extrapolated from data taken from the clinical information system based on reduced numbers of […]
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IBM donates code to open source health project
IBM has donated code to the Eclipse.org foundation’s Open Healthcare Framework (OHF), which works on increasing interoperability of healthcare software so that software vendors to easily develop applications that exchange data reliably and securely. The OHF aims to deliver an open source data sharing platform based on standards such as HL7 and Integrating the Healthcare […]
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Strike action threat over NHS Direct cuts
Unison and the Royal College of Nursing are warning they may consider strike action after a consultation into staff cuts at NHS Direct is complete. NHS Direct launched a three-month consultation in May 2006 on proposals to cut capacity due to the service picking up fewer GP Out of Hours contracts than it had […]
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