NHS Direct takes 250,000 festive calls
NHS Direct received more than a quarter of a million calls over the Christmas and New Year break, an increase of 16% on the same time last year. The health helpline answered 255,562 calls between 20 December and 1 January, compared to 221,225 during the same time last year. The busiest day was December 27, […]
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NHS 24 takes call every two seconds
Scottish health helpline NHS 24 received one telephone call every two seconds at the height of demand for its service over Christmas. Dr George Crooks, medical director for NHS 24, said the service had been extremely busy over the holiday weekend, answering 37,590 calls over the four day Christmas period and 39,331 calls over the […]
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Paramedic students trained using Second Life
The ‘collapsed clubber’ is one of five scenarios students can expect to encounter in the Second Life training system. Paramedic students in London are being trained in how to deal with emergency situations using the virtual world of Second Life. The Second Life training system uses online avatars of patients in Second Life, […]
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Data exchange needed for urgent care
Urgent and emergency care providers in England must share more data electronically if they are to improve services, the Healthcare Commission says today. Its latest report, Not Just a Matter of Time, shows that important information on patient care is often not shared between different parts of the urgent and emergency care system. It says […]
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NHS Connecting for Health backs Healthcare Interoperability showcase
NHS Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for England’s IT modernisation programme, is sponsoring the Best Practice Showcase at E-Health-Insider’s Healthcare Interoperability conference and exhibition this autumn. The showcase will give IM&T professionals working in healthcare organisations the opportunity to describe and demonstrate good work they are doing to achieve interoperability between systems. One of […]
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Italian WiMAX ambulance project launched
A new ambulance communications system is using high speed, long distance WiMAX wireless connections to enable doctors to diagnose and begin treating critically ill patients before they reach hospital.
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Wireless mannequin helps train health professionals
University of Portsmouth to use a portable mannequin which can be remote-controlled to talk, sweat, bleed, vomit and have a heart attack, for their clinical training from September.
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South Central chooses McKesson for HR support
South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust has selected McKesson Shared Services to support its HR and payroll functions. The deal will give the trust first-line support for administration tasks associated with using the NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR), which McKesson provides to the health service under a Department of Health contract. Natalie Edwards, the trust’s […]
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NHS manager suspended after losing laptop
A senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop computer containing the unencrypted records of over 20,000 patients was stolen from his car whilst he was on holiday. The machine was stolen on 18 June from a car belonging to a manager from Colchester University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The car had been parked […]
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Call for new urgent care phone number
The Ambulance Service Network (ASN) has called for a new national telephone number for urgent non-life threatening calls, which would use real-time data to ensure patients needs are accurately recorded and paramedics have all the information, in its vision for emergency and acute care. Representative of all ambulance trusts in the UK as part of […]
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