The Tablet PC on Test
Hospital doctor and former computer programmer, Andrew Harrison, has been testing a Tablet PC on the wards with some interesting results… Pen, paper and a computer terminal are essential tools in my work as a junior doctor. I use the computer primarily to look up test results, and pen and paper for everything else. When […]
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Safety Gains Available from IT
IT can substantially improve the safety of medical care but few of the technologies likely to achieve this are implemented, according to a major US review of the subject published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The review’s authors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Center for Applied Medical Information Systems, Partners HealthCare System […]
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GPC Chair Pledges Practices Will Retain Choice
Dr John Chisolm, chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) General Practitioners Committee (GPC) has pledged to fight to defend practices’ right to choose which practice systems they use. With just days to go before the closure of the ballot on the new UK-wide GP contract this Friday Dr Chisholm told delegates at the British […]
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Twin Awards for NHS Numbers for Babies
The NHS Information Authority scooped two top prizes for the NHS Numbers of Babies (NN4B) service at the 2003 Government Computing/Syntegra Awards. Programme manager, Alan Smith won the Information Age Innovator of the Year award and the NN4B team won the category for “Best Project Within An Organisation”. Mr Smith said: "To represent the NHS […]
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City Selects Doc@Home for Remote Monitoring Trial
City University, London, is to evaluate Doc@Home, a remote online clinical data gathering and healthcare management service provided by Docobo (UK), as part of a European Union (EU)-funded trial of remote clinical monitoring for 300 patients with chronic conditions at four different sites in England, Portugal and Estonia. The work forms part of a project […]
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NHS IT Investment Still Being Diverted
A new report by the Audit Commission concludes that more than half of all NHS trusts in England have diverted ‘hypothecated’ investment money away from projects such as new computer systems, to meet pressing operational requirements and plug financial deficits. While painting a fairly upbeat picture of progress to date towards NHS modernisation objectives the […]
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Two PCTs Choose Graphnet for Integrated Electronic Records
Halton primary care trust (PCT) and Warrington PCT are to develop an integrated XML-based repository of real-time patient records that will make integrated electronic patient records available to all local authorised healthcare staff. The solution, to be provided by Graphnet, will extract and integrate patient data from the different IT systems of individual GP surgeries […]
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Hanon Partners to Launch Virtual Child Protection
Hanon Solutions Ltd, the Scottish data integration specialist, has announced a new partnership to offer local authorities a solution to the Department of Health’s Identification, Referral & Tracking (IRT) initiative. The off-the-shelf package is designed to help councils ensure that information relating to children at risk is securely shared between relevant organisations. The need to […]
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Hammersmith & Fulham Integrate Care Electronically
Nationally, health and social services suffer from a lack of integrated IT systems. However, a few local authorities have started to innovate in linking the two, writes SA Matthieson. One is the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which has developed a Joint Electronic Transfer (Jet) extranet project, designed to allow doctors to view social services […]
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E-Booking Project Reaches Short-List
The procurement process for an NHS electronic bookings system reached a key milestone last week when bidders for the £40-50 million contract learned who had made it onto the short-list. E-booking forms one of the four main strands of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the NHS. Although yet to be officially announced the […]
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