Xansa secures NHS finance and accounting deal
Xansa, the IT services company, has been recommended as the preferred partner for a joint venture to provide finance and accounting services to the NHS in England, it was announced this week. The 50:50 deal with the Department of Health (DH), which will run over 10 years, is expected to start in April 2005 and […]
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Why Brunel would back NPfIT
Alright you anoraks, what do you know about engineering? I don’t mean plugging in the odd bit of extra RAM. I mean real engineering.
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National programme caught in spinal trap
With less than four weeks to go to the first scheduled release from the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), highly credible industry sources suggest that the 27 June deadline for P1R1 (phase one release one) of the programme may be missed or only partially met. P1R1 covers the patient demographic service to be made available […]
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NPfIT urged to show confidence in NHS staff
A call for leaders of the National Programme for IT to demonstrate confidence in the capabilities and professionalism of NHS staff came at E-Health Insider’s conference in London last week. Martin Bell, director of IM&T for North Bristol NHS Trust said:“The national programme is information poor, and it needs to share and let go; it […]
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Call for action on basic computer skills
At this week’s E-Health Insider/Chamberlain Dunn Associates conference ‘The NHS IT Revolution: What about the people?’ delegates called for urgent action to help provide training in trusts where up to 40% of staff lack basic computer skills. With the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) due to begin delivery this June, one of the major topics […]
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True costs of NPfIT greater than predicted?
The true costs of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) are probably going to be much greater than any of the predictions, a conference on the NHS Care Records Service heard this week. Murray Bywater, managing director of Silicon Bridge consultants and a leading healthcare IT analyst, predicted that effective user involvement could add more […]
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Record Turnout for SW Informatics Network
A record turnout for the NHS South West Informatics Learning Network’s annual conference was attributed by organisers to a rising general level of interest in NHS IT – and an understandable curiosity about future plans for the region following the cancellation of the Shires and Pan Bristol electronic records procurements. The cancellations, reported in May, […]
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South West Collaborative EPR Procurements Ended
A series of collaborative NHS IT procurement projects for electronic patient record (EPR) systems in the South West had the plug pulled last week by local management after they failed to secure national funding from the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT). The Shires and Pan-Bristol procurements predated the National Programme and had […]
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Healthcare IT and Devolution
The health services in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were detached from the English mother ship as part of devolution. This can be seen in terms of policies: in this week’s elections for the Welsh Assembly, Labour promised free prescriptions if it regained power. But it also means that IT is procured by each nation, […]
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Advice Paves the Way for National Clinical Audit
Advice is published this week on the National Clinical Audit Support Programme (NCASP) which will eventually yield comparative data on the performance of clinical services and on individual practitioners. The programme forms part of the government’s response to the Kennedy Report on child heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1984 and 95. Kennedy […]
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