Robot doctor has plans to link to NPfIT
St Mary’s NHS Trust, Paddington, is trialling the use of robot medics that will not only allow doctors to go on their rounds without leaving their chair but also may eventually connect to the National Programme for IT. The RP6 (Remote Presence) robots (right), dubbed ‘Sister Mary’ and ‘Dr Robbie’, are similar in design to […]
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Choose and Book may get mobile txt reminders
Plans are being drawn up to introduce a national automatic appointment reminder service to cut missed appointments by patients, a problem estimated to cost the NHS up to £250 million a year. The aim is to introduce the system next year as part of Choose and Book, the late-running national electronic appointment booking service. EHI […]
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Data spine could form part of 2011 Census
Data in the 2011 census could come from patient records held on the National Programme for IT, according to a consultation document released by the Office for National Statistics. "Detailed information on health conditions and treatments" from the data spine may be incorporated in the next 10-yearly census, the document suggests, providing the system is […]
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First PACS installations go live … quietly
The first picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) installed under the National Programme for IT went live recently but details are not being made public yet. News of the PACS ‘go-lives’ was buried among the list of IT modernisation achievements in the annual report on the NHS by the service’s chief executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, […]
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Pharmacy IT award nominations now open
The Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists have opened nominations for their 2006 annual award for innovative use of information technology within pharmacies, sponsored by First DataBank. The ‘First DataBank Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists Information Technology Award’, which is worth £2500, was set four years ago to encourage new ideas and best practice from pharmacists using IT. […]
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Site lowers blood pressure of procurement officers
An Irish website that aims to painstakingly check and document the medical validations of all the blood-pressure monitoring equipment on the market has become an international success. Dabl Educational Trust, a not-for-profit company sponsored by Dublin-based software company Dabl, was set up by William Rickard and Professor Eoin O’Brien.with support from the Royal College of […]
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Wrong prescription in second GPASS record error
A second patient has been given the wrong prescription in a repeat of a printer error at a Glasgow practice which computer suppliers GPASS described as an isolated incident when it first happened. The first error happened in January at the C Wing practice in Woodside Health Centre, Glasgow, when two prescriptions went to be […]
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Free UK online health journal planned
The Wellcome Trust and the US National Library of Medicine are intending to set up a UK-based version of the free open-access online health research directory PubMed Central. Unlike conventional pay-for-access print and online journals, PubMed Central is freely available, with funding coming from researchers paying to have their papers included. The research charity has […]
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Burns steps down as NPfIT implementation lead
Alan Burns, the chief executive of Trent strategic health authority, has stood down as the implementation lead for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) just six months after being appointed. He is the latest in a series of senior experienced NHS leaders and clinicians at the top of the programme to have left early […]
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GPs ‘over-perform’ on QoF by £200m
Payments to GPs under the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) of the new GMS contract look certain to massively exceed the original sums budgeted by the Department of Health. Dr Ian Trimble, a Nottingham GP, advisor to the Department of Health and one of the architects of QoF performance management framework for general practice, said […]
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