EU conference in Norway spotlights e-health partnership
European commissioners have called for greater partnerships between both the public and the private sector and between different countries to advance the cause of computerising healthcare across Europe. The third European ministerial conference on e-health, held this week in Tromso, Norway, focused on best practice and examples of how e-health can improve patient care, and […]
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No need to register for Choose and Book yet, says BMA
GP representatives have told GPs that there is no need to complete the registration process for Connecting for Health in order to express an interest in Choose and Book. The British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee says that primary care trusts are putting practices under pressure to complete the registration process so that PCTs can […]
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Data remember
Data transferred between GP systems must be scrupulously examined for errors. E-Health Insider looks at the issues involved and where the responsibilities lie.
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Hardware upgrades may swallow Choose and Book money
Incentive money for Choose and Book may be spent on upgrading hardware to allow e-booking to work, as primary care trusts face bills of hundreds of thousands of pounds to bring systems up to scratch. Newcastle PCT estimates that it will have to replace around 400 PCs, while other PCTs say that more than half the […]
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GP says clinical consultation not delivering
A GP involved in advising Connecting for Health has claimed the programme is being mismanaged with professional input ignored and that the Choose and Book software is potentially dangerous. Dr Nigel de Kare Silver, a GP in Neasden, north London, and IT lead for Brent Primary Care Trust, has outlined his concerns in an article […]
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Major ministerial reshuffle for health
John Hutton, the health minister whose responsibilities included NHS IT, has been promoted in the post-election reshuffle. He enters the new cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the formal title for the minister for the Cabinet Office. He will head up the department where the government’s chief information officer, Ian Watmore, works monitoring […]
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‘Connect with GPs’ call for IT modernisers
A GP magazine has called on Connecting for Health (formerly the National Programme for IT) to connect with its readers following a survey of NHS IT modernisation. Pulse magazine says respondents to its Agenda 2005 survey condemned the government’s "entire approach to IT." It says half of 1003 respondents felt the government’s IT policy ‘badly’ […]
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GP-to-GP transfer pilot project begins
The National Programme for IT has begun pilots of GP-to-GP record transfer between practices running EMIS and InPractice Systems, using dummy records, in three areas of the country. GP-to-GP record transfer, when fully operational, will for the first time enable patient records to be seamlessly electronically transferred from one practice to another when a patient […]
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Shedding light
E-Health Insider looks at documents released by NPfIT under FOI and describes how you can also make a request.
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Choose and Book need not stop PBC, say GPC
Concern over Choose and Book should not prevent GPs from getting involved with practice based commissioning, the British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee (GPC) has said. The GPC has issued new guidance on practice based commissioning (PBC) in which it says that despite some recently introduced disincentives, including Choose and Book, it believes there are […]
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