Choose and Book’s problems continue
Technical problems caused the national Choose and Book service to be unavailable for most of Tuesday 3 January, the day that Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt announced that patient choice was now a reality across the NHS. The embarrassing technical failure – which resulted in the service being unavailable for most of the day – was […]
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Pharmacists urged to contact PCTs on smart cards
Pharmacy representatives are telling pharmacists to contact their primary care trusts over smartcard availability as Connecting for Health publishes its first set of guidance for pharmacists on the electronic prescription service (EPS). The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee says it is “strongly advising” pharmacists to contact their PCT to find out what the local arrangements will […]
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NHS suffering from broken spine
NHS sites experienced acute spine problems in the week before Christmas, resulting in key systems being unavailable to NHS staff, and other sites having their access suspended. E-Health Insider has learned that a number of systems connected to NHS Connecting for Health’s (CfH) data spine were last week left unable to look up patients’ demographic details on […]
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Norfolk and Norwich shelves iSoft PAS
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust have shelved the implementation of a new Patient Administration System from iSoft, provided by Accenture under the NHS National Programme for IT. The trust suspended implementation efforts due to lack of confidence in the ability of iSoft and local service provider (LSP) Accenture to deliver the system "within […]
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NHS signs enterprise deal with Novell
NHS Connecting for Health has negotiated a £21.8m deal with infrastructure and software services supplier Novell, which it claims will make it easier for the NHS to use open source products and software. According to Novell the deal covers three main areas – identity products, desktop management and the ability for the NHS to make […]
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NPfIT support procurement enters final stretch
NHS Connecting for Health has announced that the three remaining bidders for the First Line Service Support (FLSS) contract are Capita, CSC Computer Sciences and Fujitsu. The FLSS project is intended to replace the National Service Desk, a support line that services the National Programme for IT implementation across all five clusters in England. Five […]
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Local trust data overwritten by Choose and Book
E-Health Insider has learned that some hospitals linked to the national Choose and Book appointment booking system are having some local patient record details unexpectedly over-written each time they receive an electronic referral from the NHS spine. As a result, the affected hospitals have to manually re-enter deleted patient details — such as the patient’s […]
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PACS roll-out stalls in NW and West Midlands
The roll-out programme for PACS in the North West and West Midlands of England by CSC looks in danger of stalling. Despite assurances from NHS Connecting for Health (CfH), as recently as two weeks ago, that initial implementations will begin before the end of December 2005, E-Health Insider has confirmed that none of the four […]
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Seven pharmacy systems accredited for R1 ETP
Seven out of 11 pharmacy systems have attained technical accreditation for release one of electronic transmission of prescriptions (ETP) according to Connecting for Health (CfH). However technical accreditation does not equate to compliance which will only be achieved once a system has been successfully tested at an initial implementer site. CfH this week posted details […]
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CfH clinical lead predicts consensus on consent
Connecting for Health and the medical profession will be able to reach a consensus on the consent model for the NHS Care Records Service, predicts CfH’s GP clinical lead Prof Mike Pringle. Doctors’ bodies and the NHS IT agency are currently divided over how consent for the NCRS should operate. The qualified opt out policy […]
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