Mixed results as Contact splutters into life
E-Health Insider has had a bumper response from NHS staff sharing their experiences of the first week of Contact, the new NHS email system, following last week’s news on the problems some readers have experienced. A major frustration appears to be the difficulty or inability to configure Contact to operate within Microsoft Outlook – a serious problem […]
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Robot cat gives patients happy felines
Researchers in Georgetown University, Washington DC, have found that stroking a robotic cat is more beneficial to health than petting a toy; and that such a machine could even remind patients to take medication. Alexander and Elena Libin, a husband-and-wife team of robotic psychology researchers, found that the NeCoRo robots (below), manufactured by Japanese company […]
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Standard NHS user interface to be developed
Microsoft has announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Programme for IT to deliver a standard user interface (UI) for all NHS clinical information systems. The announcement came at the same time as news of a long-term licensing agreement with the NHS for Microsoft software. Under the agreement relating to […]
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Microsoft signs new software deal with NPfIT
Health minister John Hutton has announced a three-year software licensing deal with Microsoft, claiming savings for the NHS of up to £112m over the next three years. The Department of Health (DH) says that the NHS will save a whopping £330 million over the lifetime of the deal, thanks to tight negotiations led by the National […]
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Engage or risk failure, BMA IT chief tells NPfIT
Dr John Powell, chair of the British Medical Association’s IT committee, has issued a fresh call to the National Programme for IT to engage with healthcare professionals or risk another public sector IT failure. Speaking at the IBC Informa ‘eHealth: Transforming healthcare access and delivery’ conference in London yesterday, Dr Powell said: "We need to learn […]
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Mencap chief exec joins care record board
Jo Williams, chief executive of Mencap, the UK’s leading learning disability charity, has joined the National Programme for IT’s Care Record Development Board (CRDB) as its social care deputy chair. Williams (right) said she was very pleased to be appointed and to be working with CRDB chair, Harry Cayton, for whom she said she had the […]
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Large scale MiSys EPR goes live in Saudi
Saudi Arabia’s National Guard Health Affairs (NGHA), the healthcare facility for the Saudi Arabian military police, has gone live with an electronic patient record system from IT solutions firm Misys. Misys CPR will cover members of the National Guard and their dependents. The company claims that the system will be one of the biggest clinical […]
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Open source software could save NHS money
The Office of Government Commerce has made recommendations that public procurement of software should consider open source solutions, citing, amongst other case studies, the experience of a Dublin-based hospital that made significant savings in transferring all its software to open source. The report says that public sector bodies should “examine carefully the technical and business […]
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Surgeon tags patients with WiFi to improve safety
Birmingham Heartlands Hospital is claiming to have the world’s first pilot of wireless active tagging system for patients, with links to electronic records containing digital photographs and a new easily-updatable electronic operating list. The system was introduced as part of a pilot three weeks ago to save time on verifying pre-operative checks, and to improve patient safety. […]
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New NHS email system switched on
The new NHS email system, Contact, has belatedly gone live after the abortive launch two weeks ago – but early indications from some E-Health Insider readers suggest that some significant teething problems remain with the new Cable & Wireless provided ‘Contact’ system. One NHS IT manager wrote to E-Health Insider this week providing his anonymous […]
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