Scotland Launches Online Waiting List Database
An online database of hospital waiting lists intended to help cut NHS waiting times and provide patients with greater choice has been launched by Scottish health minister Malcolm Chisholm. The new database, called The National Waiting Times Database, will provide comparative information on waiting times for routine outpatient appointments across Scotland. The service, which will […]
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The NHS and the IT Industry: Over to You (part 2)
Last week, E-Health Insider published a round-up of comments from readers on the apparent new hard line on suppliers being adopted by NHS IT Tsar Richard Granger –The NHS and the IT Industry: Over to You. Since then your emails have continued to roll in. One reader emailed to ask about our readership: "Has anyone […]
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Porn-Blocking Software Impedes Access to Health Info
The most restrictive settings on pornography-blocking software shut out the highest proportion of health sites without delivering substantially higher gains in pornography restriction, researchers have found. The findings are significant because the Internet has become an important tool for finding health information, especially among adolescents. There is concern that blocking software cannot perfectly discriminate between […]
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Carry On Spending and Modernising, Says Brown
Chancellor Gordon Brown has ordered the NHS to carry on with plans for extra spending and modernisation despite shortfalls in national revenues which have forced up borrowing. The Financial Times reported that borrowing would have to rise by £20bn – almost twice the figure forecast back in April – to enable the government to stick […]
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Electronic Booking Shifts Up a Gear
A further 45 electronic booking programmes are to start as the NHS gears up to meet its target of making all hospital appointment booking electronic by March 2005, health minister John Hutton announced today. Speaking at a conference held to celebrate the achievements of the five ‘Enterprise Communities’ already experimenting with electronic booking, Mr Hutton […]
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Panther Takes Aim at Citrix in Health
The DAT Group has launched to the healthcare market Panther Server 2002, as an affordable alternative to Citrix Metaframe, and has appointed Centrom as its exclusive partner for the healthcare IT market. Like Citrix, Panther is a new Enterprise Management Platform for remotely delivering and managing Windows-based applications to client desktops across a network. Leading […]
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SureScript Completes E-Prescribing Agreements
SureScript Systems has completed a series of agreements to introduce a common electronic prescribing system that will cover most US drug stores belonging to pharmacy chains. The e-pharmacy organisation was established as a joint venture by the National Community Pharmacists Association and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores — which between them represent 55,000 independent […]
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Planning Blight Accusation For IT Programme
Over 300 IT suppliers and would-be suppliers to the NHS packed the QE2 Conference Centre in London last week for an update on the National IT Programme – but they found hard news of progress thin on the ground. BBC science correspondent, Fergus Walsh, who chaired the event, conveyed the opinion of a participant who […]
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Investment, Expansion and Reform Plans Reinforce IM&T Agenda
Information management and technology (IM&T) is identified as one of the key areas underpinning NHS and social care development which needs to be expanded over the next three years. The Department of Health’s priorities and planning framework for 2003-6, Investment Expansion and Reform published this week says that nationally the NHS will be looking for […]
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Personal Health Journal Advocated
A US group of health reformers has advocated the development of a Personal Health Journal, a voluntary system of electronic medical records that would be transportable over the Internet, but owned and controlled by individual patients. The proposals suggest how the NHS’s electronic health records programme may become a key tool to promote quality, patient […]
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