King’s Fund warns on quality measures
Greater use of quality indicators in the NHS could be a powerful tool to improve care, but could also lead to misinterpretation and confusion, the King’s Fund has warned. The health policy think-tank is calling on the NHS to make sure it is clear about the aims of different measures and the audiences at which they […]
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Hitachi completes London portal
Hitachi Consulting United Kingdom has announced that it has completed the delivery of a portal to support commissioning in London. The Provider Performance Analytics portal was the first product to be delivered by Commissioning Support for London, a capital-wide clinical and business support service launched on 1 April last year. The first phase of the […]
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One in three GPs say PBC data poor
More than one in three GPs actively involved in practice-based commissioning rate the quality of information and data they receive for PBC as poor
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Oldham outsources IT to Computacenter
NHS Oldham has outsourced its IT services to Computacenter in a four year deal worth £650,000 a year. The primary care trust says the deal has already saved it 10% on its previous arrangements, provided by a PCT-run shared service. It estimates savings of a further 25% over the next year to 18 months. Stephen […]
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Avia acquires Plain Healthcare
Avia Health Informatics has announced the acquisition of clinical decision support specialists Plain Healthcare. Avia Health informatics has been set up to invest in health technology companies. It said the investment in Plain Healthcare would allow it to develop its products further and faster. The Plain Software Company was admitted to trading on AIM last […]
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UnitedHealth buys ScriptSwitch for £50m
ScriptSwitch, the provider of drug comparison software to doctors’ surgeries, has been acquired by UnitedHealth UK, for a reported sum of £50m.
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Siemens wins west London LAN deal
NHS Kensington and Chelsea has signed a contract with Siemens Enterprise Communications for a single voice and secure data network. The trust will roll-out Siemens’ OpenScape Voice platform and secure Enterasys Data Local Area Network (LAN) networking equipment at the beginning of 2010 as part of a single service agreement. When the implementation is complete, […]
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North East Essex tags infants
The Fryatt Hospital in Harwich, Essex, has installed a new infant protection system to prevent children from being abducted. Infants at the trust can now wear a Hugs tag attached to their ankle by a soft tamper-proof strap. A computer console displays images of floor plans of the area which show tag locations with monitored […]
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Tories promise records for all
Patient-held records are one of the Conservative Party’s priorities for health, according to plans published today. The party said it would carry out a full consultation on how to move to patient-held records with a view to introducing them throughout the NHS. In a speech at the Royal College of Pathologists, party leader David Cameron said […]
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Mind the gap
Brian Derry from the NHS Information Centre reflects on the coming financial crunch and how informatics can help the NHS through it.
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