Nurses need better access to IT, says RCN survey
A survey of nurses, midwives and health visitors undertaken by the Royal College of Nursing has shown that not enough nursing staff have access to information, computer training and the internet when they need to at work. Although 15% of nurses said they had no access to computers and 17% said they had no access […]
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Northern Ireland unveils plans for electronic records
Northern Ireland has announced plans to develop its own electronic care record in a move which has led to calls for a UK-wide IT programme. The ten year plan for health and social services information technology in Northern Ireland was announced by Angela Smith, Northern Ireland health minister. Costs for implementing the strategy are estimated […]
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Survey exposes unsafe security practice
Measures taken by doctors to safeguard confidentiality, especially electronic records, are severely deficient and fuel the concerns of those trusted to police data security, say the authors of a letter to the British Medical Journal. The signatories to the letter draw their conclusions from a survey of 32 surgical trainees invited to complete a questionnaire […]
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Hospital clerk jailed for culling patient data
A hospital worker from Northern Ireland who collected information from the patient records of politicians, senior military and police personnel, prison officers, members policing boards and loyalists was jailed for six years earlier this month. Belfast Crown Court Judge Mr Justice Higgins told Ciaran James Cunningham that it was “difficult to think of a more […]
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The Quality Management and Analysis System (QMAS)
The quality and outcomes framework (QoF) is designed to reward practices for the quality of care offered to their patients and will be an important part of General Practice income for the next few years.
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MPs told Wales, Scotland and NI passed on NPfIT
The NHS in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales were each approached and subsequently turned down the opportunity to participate in the £6billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT), a Commons select committee has been told. As a result, hospitals in England treating patients from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland face the prospect of having to maintain […]
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Nurses in the dark on IT developments, survey reveals
UK nurses are generally positive about NHS IT developments, but over three quarters have received little or no information about them, a survey conducted by Nursix for the Royal College of Nursing reveals. Alison Kitson, executive director nursing, at the RCN, said: "Clearly nurses can see huge improvements in patient care with the introduction of […]
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Reader Comment: ‘NPfIT Viewed from Scotland’
The following ‘reader comment’ was supplied in response to recent E-Health Insider reports on the development of the National Programme for IT. The author is a consultant anaesthetist at a leading Scottish acute trust, who leads on IT issues locally. There is much about the current national programme procurements and what they entail, and the machinations […]
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IBM To Consolidate NI Health IT
IBM has announced that the first applications have gone live under its ten-year contract to provide Directorate of Information Systems of the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) in Northern Ireland to with consolidated IT systems. The ten-year deal was signed with the DHSSPS in January to provide it with a regional, consolidated […]
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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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