EMIS dispute heats up
The dispute between EMIS and the National Programme for IT became increasingly heated this week with the EMIS National User Group encouraging members to write to their MP to express their concerns about the National Programme; and NHS IT Director General Richard Granger appearing to criticise EMIS’s systems. With almost 60% of GPs using EMIS […]
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Disclosure: a key issue for Caldicott Guardians in 2004
The UK’s 1,000 plus Caldicott Guardians, champions for data protection in the NHS and social care, have a packed agenda for 2004 and a new group, the UK Council of Caldicott Guardians, to support them. E-Health Insider talked to the NHS Information Authority’s guardian, DrJanine Brooks, who is helping to set up the council . Speaking […]
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National US health information infrastructure called for
The influential Institute of Medicine (IOM) has published a new report calling on the US Government to create national data standards for collecting and exchanging electronic medical information that would provide a national ‘information infrastructure’ to help spur the adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs). The report outlines a plan to accelerate the development of […]
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Fears of patient abuse of e-mail not realised
Doctors’ fears that an e-mail consultation service would be abused turned out to be unfounded, the International e-Health Association Conference in London heard. Dr Paul C. Tang, Chief Medical Information Officer at the Paolo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF), California, said that there had been concern about introducing a facility on the foundation’s web service, PAMF […]
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US Medical Insurance Group to Subsidise PDA Software
A US physician liability insurance organisation, MedAmerica Mutual Risk Retention Group, is to offer its members a subsidy towards the purchase of copies of the eProcrates handheld clinical reference source for handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) in order to improve patient safety and reduce drug errors. California-based MedAmerica Mutual will subsidise the ePocrates Rx Pro application, […]
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XML Special Focus: Supporting Clinical Governance
Support for clinical audit and improved clinical governance is one of the great advances promised by electronic medical record systems but they usually require clinicians to shoehorn their thoughts and opinions about a patient into pre-determined formats. Free text, so the received wisdom goes, cannot be analysed. To produce information of the quality needed for […]
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US Institute Publishes Core Capabilities for EHRs
In a new report the independent Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the US National Academies, has published a set of eight core functions that electronic health records (EHRs) should be able to offer. The IOM report, ‘Key Capabilities of an Electronic Health Record System’, is intended to provide a basic ‘functional model’ for an […]
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National Programme Names LSP and NASP Candidates
The National Programme for IT in the NHS has announced a “longlist” of 31 individual firms and consortia who have won through the first stage of tendering to be Local Service Providers (LSPs) and National Application Service Providers (NASPs) for the programme. The announcement said that 27 candidates had qualified for further consideration for the […]
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HC 2003 – Pick of the Product and Service News
Healthcare Computing is a traditional launch pad for healthcare IT products and services and the industry did not disappoint this year. We list below a selection of the new launches, versions and deals announced at Harrogate last week. Click here for a full list of exhibitors. Telemedicine Solutions from Tandberg Tandberg demonstrated its videoconferencing solution, […]
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Cedars-Sinai Suspends Use of New Clinical IT System
Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, the largest private hospital in the Western US, has suspended use of a prestige multimillion-dollar computerised system for doctors’ orders, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Doctors at the hospital are reported to have complained that it was endangering patient safety and required too much work. […]
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