Granger says final LSP contract will come when ‘right’
The final local service provider (LSP) contract for the South of England will be signed in the New Year, when suppliers have "responded to treatment", says NHS IT director-general Richard Granger. In a short interview with E-Health Insider on the day that two of the remaining three LSP contracts were signed Granger said he was […]
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No rational reason to make N3 a closed system
NHS IT director-general Richard Granger says there will be adequate controls on information passing over the new NHS network but that much of the network will be built across public switch equipment. Granger told the International e-Health Association conference in London on 16 October: “I can see no rational reason for not doing this.” He […]
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XML Special Focus: Unblocking Beds
Bed blocking is an issue faced by every acute hospital. At Queen Alexandra Hospital in the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, audit figures revealed that over 40% of beds were occupied by non-acute patients and that only 27% of the hospital’s occupied bed days were used for dealing with essential acute medical treatment. To address the […]
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XML Special Focus: e-Booking for GP Special Interest Clinics
Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust (TPCT) faced the common problem of long waiting times for hospital dermatology appointments, but also realised it had an asset in the shape of three local GPs with particular expertise in the specialty. Head of IM&T, Dave Shovlin takes up the story: “The GPs, together with the lead for Dermatology […]
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Yakult to Sponsor Text Appointment Reminders
Enpocket, a provider of mobile media and technology services, has announced that bio-yoghurt drink brand Yakult has become the first sponsor to sign up for a new sponsored NHS appointment reminder service using text messages. The development follows initial trials of a text message appointment reminder service at Homerton Hospital that began in 2002 (Homerton […]
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Mandatory Shared Financial Services Dropped
Plans to save up to £500m a year in NHS administration costs through the introduction of a next generation standardised NHS-wide finance system are in serious doubt following the Government’s decision not to mandate the adoption of shared financial services. The decision to drop implementation of two central pillars of the shared services initiative coincided […]
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Shared Financial Services Pilots go Live
The first NHS Financial Shared Services Centre (SSC) went live on 1 April, marking a milestone in the provision of key business support services to NHS organisations using the very latest web-based technology. West Yorkshire SSC, based near Leeds, went "live" with all nine of its first wave Trusts on 1 April 2003. The South […]
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Conservatives Detect Panic on Healthcare IT
A Conservative health spokesperson has told E-Health Insider that he is worried the NHS National Programme for IT is too big, has resulted in local progress grinding to a halt, and threatens to squeeze out local priorities. He calls for the programme to be broken down into more manageable pieces that better reflect local service […]
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Kaiser Permanente Aims for E-Health within Three Years
Kaiser Permanente, the second biggest integrated health delivery organisation in the US, has announced that it will invest $1.8 billion in advanced ICT systems including electronic medical records, electronic appointment booking, electronic prescription refills and referral requests. The programme represents one of the largest and most ambitious implementations of electronic medical records yet seen, in […]
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Portsmouth Predicts Savings from Clinical Workflow System
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has announced it has implemented an XML-based clinical workflow system, which it anticipates will help support early discharges, reduce the average length patient stays in hospital and deliver cost savings. Clinical IT solutions provider, Graphnet, has developed and implemented the new clinical workflow system in the Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) at […]
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