Electronic Social Care Record To Be Phased
The December 2004 target for implementing full electronic social care records (ESCR) is not achievable and the roll-out is now due to take place between 2008-2010, at the same time as the English NHS integrated care record service (ICRS), a conference heard this week. Roger Staton, head of the Social Care Information Policy Unit at […]
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Poor IT Placing Patients at Risk Junior Doctors Warn
Improved communications systems that reflect the radically changed working practices in hospitals are vital to guarantee patient safety, a new report by the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee concludes. The report, ‘Making IT work for Junior Doctors’, produced to identify problems and solutions to better inform and influence the development of the National Programme for IT […]
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Torex Buys Obs & Gynae Systems Specialist
Torex continued its march along the acquisition trail with the purchase of Protos Limited, the UK’s dominant provider of obstetric and gynaecology IT systems. The sale has been sealed for £1.45m in Torex ordinary shares and up to £0.4m cash, depending on the level of cash in the business. Both shares and cash are payable […]
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Basque GPs Suspended over Centralised Data Protest
Two GPs from the Basque Country in northern Spain have been suspended without pay, apparently for refusing to use a centralised database of patient records, writes SA Mathieson. The Basque health service, Osakidetza, last year implemented a central database called Osabide. According to Dr Juan Gérvas, a Madrid doctor and visiting professor at Baltimore’s Johns […]
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Healthcare IT and Devolution
The health services in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were detached from the English mother ship as part of devolution. This can be seen in terms of policies: in this week’s elections for the Welsh Assembly, Labour promised free prescriptions if it regained power. But it also means that IT is procured by each nation, […]
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The National IT Programme: Readers Have Their Say 2
Our first batch of readers’ comments on the National Programme for IT in the NHS brought some interesting replies. The discussion started after IT tsar Richard Granger asked, in the course of his speech at HC2003, whether there were any alternatives to the direction of travel set by the National Programme. Our first correspondent took […]
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New Forum to Support Interoperability Standards
A new Health Care Interoperability Forum (HCIF) has been set up to actively support the design of interoperability standards covering over 90 data flows which occur in the patient’s journey through the UK health system. The forum says its members are drawn from all the leading GP, out of hours and NHS Direct system suppliers […]
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“Rocky Road” to e-Procurement Predicted
European healthcare institutions show a growing willingness to embrace electronic procurement of supplies but there will be a rocky road to universal acceptance of the technology, according to a new study by market consultants, Frost & Sullivan. The study’s findings show that just £276 million worth of hospital supplies were bought electronically in Europe in […]
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Joining Up Is Hard To Do
Technology has an important role to play in the realising the ideal of “joined up” public services, but progress has been slow. SA Mathieson explores the problems and the potential. Specialist IT consultant, Stephen Howes, has encountered offices where staff have two terminals on their desks: one connected to the health network and the other […]
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The National IT Programme: Readers Have Their Say
At HC2003 NHS IT director-general Richard Granger said that he wanted a debate about whether there were viable alternatives to the direction of travel set out by the National Programme. Though he made clear that he believed the route set out was the best way to ensure delivery, he added it was not too late […]
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