DH found guilty on MTAS data protection breach
The Information Commissioner’s Office has found the Department of Health in breach of the Data Protection Act following an investigation into a security breach in the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) website, and warns the department faces potential prosecution. The ICO yesterday warned the DH of possible future prosecutions following the May security breach on […]
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BMA votes for non co-operation on central records
Doctors have voted for a public inquiry into NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) and have called on the BMA to advise doctors not to co-operate with the centralised storage of medical records. The National Programme for IT was the subject of strong criticism at the association’s annual representative meeting (ARM) this week where doctors claimed the […]
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Junior doctors’ confidential details openly displayed
The Medical Training Application Service website will be the subject of a Department of Health investigation after an undercover reporter found that the private details of over 1,000 junior doctor applicants were available to view on the website. Channel 4 News said that it logged onto a website provided to them by a doctor and […]
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Metal medicine
E-Health Insider looks at the continuing work into robotics in healthcare being carried out by Imperial College, London.
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Come together
As mobile devices start taking on more than one function, what implications will there be for healthcare? Colin Jervis of Kinetic Consulting makes some suggestions.
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Unison condemns offshore medical transcription
NHS trusts that outsource the transcription of medical notes to South Africa, the Philippines and India received a sharp rebuke from health union, Unison, yesterday. General secretary, Dave Prentis, speaking at the union’s annual conference this week, condemned the outsourcing as “a very dangerous practice.” The union has accumulated anecdotal evidence of potentially life-threatening mistakes […]
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Trouble continues over online doctor recruitment
Senior clinicians have expressed concerns that the online selection process for student doctors looking for their first placement is not sufficiently robust, with personal statements being left unchecked and academic qualifications only a fraction of the final assessment. The Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) website came under fire in a letter signed by 84 medical professors, […]
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Junior doctor placement website crashing, BMA warns
The BMA have expressed concern that medical students applying online for their first jobs as junior doctors have been unable to find out where they are placed because the results website was too busy. The Multi-Deanery Appointment Process (MDAP) at www.newdoctor.org was recently set up to match students with junior doctor posts across the UK through […]
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Harvard medical students learn with their iPods
Harvard Medical School have started offering podcasts of their lectures to their students, allowing them to learn while on the move. Students can subscribe to a feed from their ‘MyCourses’ page, a web portal that handles each student’s calendar, lecture timetable and contains notes to multimedia case studies and reference sites. New lectures are automatically […]
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New medical students to face computer test
Many students applying to university to study medicine or dentistry will be required to undergo a 90-minute computer aptitude test as part of their course application. The UK Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT), which is being developed by a consortium of universities with testing company Pearson VUE, will affect students applying to 24 medicalschools nationwide, […]
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