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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Technology can reduce or create medication errors
Technology has the potential both to reduce and to create new types of medication errors – and should be implemented with care, according to a national report from the US Pharmacopeia. The MEDMARX report analysing medical errors reported in 2002 shows that computer entry problems accounted for 10.3% of all the “causes of […]
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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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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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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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E-prescribing Arrives for Out-of-Hours GPs
A major step towards electronic prescribing for out-of-hours (OOH) doctors in England has been taken with the launch of new software supporting online prescribing by Adastra Software Ltd. Adastra, the provider of GP out-of-hours software to 80% of GP co-operatives, has incorporated e-prescribing tools into version three of its ‘OnLine Clinician’ software. Stockport and Nottingham […]
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Major Grants to Develop ISABEL Decision Support Tool
Funding totalling £127,000 over three years has been awarded by the Department of Health to develop the ISABEL paediatric diagnosis tool for use with adults. The grant will be matched by an equal contribution from the Helen Hamlyn Trust. The award-winning, web-based decision support tool has been evaluated for paediatric use and passed an important […]
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