Main NPfIT contractors paid £1.2bn last year
Despite continued delays in many areas of the National Programme for IT,Connecting for Health paid its main contractors over £1.5bn in the past financial year.
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IT to be included in hospital ‘deep cleans’
IT and telephone equipment have been included in the Department of Health’s list of items be subjected to a rigorous cleansing, when all trusts are given a ‘deep clean’ to tackle infections such as MRSA and c. difficile. Every hospital in Britain is to undergo a ward-by-ward ‘deep clean’ within the next year to rid […]
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Johnson named as new health secretary
Alan Johnson has today been appointed as England’s new health secretary by Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The former education secretary replaces Patricia Hewitt who resigned last night. In a letter to Brown, Hewitt said she has decided to step down to give more time to her “constituency and family.” Johnson, 57, was the runner-up in […]
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Letter to the PM
In an open letter Robin Guenier, former CEO of the Government’s Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency, urges the new Prime Minister to take action on the NHS IT programme.
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OGC accused of shredding Gateway review reports
The Office of Government Commerce has reportedly ordered civil servants to destroy copies of Gateway review reports into government computer upgrades, to prevent information on delayed projects being leaked or disclosed under Freedom of Information legislation. The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Gateway Process examines government programmes and projects at key decision points in their […]
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Online service launched for antenatal screening
A new web-based antenatal screening service has been launched to supplement screening available on the NHS. Genio, which offers antenatal screening for a wide range of conditions, was launched this month by Capex Health Services. Its directors believe that it is the first online service of its kind in the UK, but stress that they […]
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Brown plays a safe hand with electronic scripts
The chancellor Gordon Brown has called for more electronic prescriptions to be issued in the NHS, as part of his campaign to be the next leader of the Labour Party. Brown, the favourite to win the leadership contest, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that there needed to be “more electronic prescriptions so […]
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Rio rolls out in West London trust
West London Mental Health NHS Trust rolled out the Rio clinical information system after an implementation involving 91,000 records and 250,000 clinical documents. First implemented last October on a restricted basis, the trust has now expanded the system to all its clinical teams, with 500-600 trained users now in action. West London’s director of IM&T, […]
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NPfIT ‘needs re-evaluating to be a success’
Connecting for Health must look at three key things – scalability, complexity and availability if the National Programme for Information Technology is to be a success, according to a panel of industry professionals. Speaking at the Healthcare Computing 2007 conference in Harrogate, the panel said that the size and complexity of the NPfIT programme had […]
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National US personal health record launched
Medem, a not-for-profit company created by leading US medical societies including the American Medical Association, announced this week the national launch of an internet-based ‘personal health record’, that is intended to become the "ATM service for healthcare". The new freely available internet-based personal health record, iHealthRecord, will allow patients to easily access and organise their […]
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