Child protection database plans revived
A fresh £8.6m initiative to co-ordinate NHS and social services data to improve child protection has been announced by the government.
News
ContactPoint to close on 6 August
The controversial children’s database ContactPoint is to be shut down on 6 August, the government has announced. In a written statement, education minister Tim Loughton said the government was fulfilling its long-standing commitment to close the database. ContactPoint was launched by Labour in January 2009 to provide demographic data on every child in the country, […]
News
ContactPoint to be replaced
The children’s database ContactPoint is to continue to operate in a scaled down version while the government decides what should replace it. The Department of Education has told local authorities that the government intends to end ContactPoint “as soon as is practicable”, but that ministers have decided to carry on with the database in a […]
News
NHS Scotland gets Knowledge Network
A professional social networking site for NHS staff in Scotland has been unveiled by Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon.
News
Web calculator identifies statins risks
Researchers have developed a web calculator to identify patients at high-risk of adverse events from statins after a study found some may have unintended effects. The study on statins, published in the BMJ, used the QResearch database of patients from UK GP practices to look at adverse outcomes from statins and found some can lead […]
News
QRISK2 goes open source
The heart disease risk assessment tool QRisk2 has been made available as open source software by Nottingham University and healthcare IT suppliers EMIS. The university and EMIS said the decision would mean all users, including academics, PCTs and commercial health software suppliers, would be able to develop software using QRisk2 free of charge. The move […]
News
QRISK2 gets more support
The heart disease risk score QRISK2 is more accurate at identifying people in the UK at high risk of cardiovascular disease than the Framingham risk equation, newly published research has concluded. Statisticians from Oxford University compared QRISK2 with its predecessor QRISK1 and with the version of Framingham previously recommended by the National Institute for Health […]
News
ContactPoint to be scrapped
The controversial children’s database ContactPoint is to be scrapped by the new government, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have revealed.
News
EHI Interview: Norman Lamb
As part of EHI’s general election coverage, Sarah Bruce talks to the Lib Dem health spokesman.
Feature
Inquiry into transplant database errors
An independent review has been launched into how as many as 800,000 people on the UK organ donor register had their preferences incorrectly recorded. A “technical error” has lead to 21 cases in which the wrong organs may have been taken from deceased donors over the past six years. It is believed that the error occurred when the […]
News