Mixed results as Contact splutters into life
E-Health Insider has had a bumper response from NHS staff sharing their experiences of the first week of Contact, the new NHS email system, following last week’s news on the problems some readers have experienced. A major frustration appears to be the difficulty or inability to configure Contact to operate within Microsoft Outlook – a serious problem […]
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Xansa secures NHS finance and accounting deal
Xansa, the IT services company, has been recommended as the preferred partner for a joint venture to provide finance and accounting services to the NHS in England, it was announced this week. The 50:50 deal with the Department of Health (DH), which will run over 10 years, is expected to start in April 2005 and […]
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Internet has blown away library walls
The Internet has blown away the walls of libraries as effectively as Semtex, Dr Muir Gray, director of the National electronic Library for Health, told a conference of NHS IT and informatics professionals in London this week. But the new online world leaves those seeking information about health with a choice of literally thousands of […]
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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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IBM Joins With ATOS KPMG Consulting
As first revealed by E-Health Insider last week IBM and ATOS KPMG Consulting are to bid jointly as a Local Service Provider (LSP) for the NHS National IT Programme and associated contracts. This week their senior health executives tell us why they believe the alliance matters. “It’s an extremely important move for us we’ve been […]
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Questions in the House About DG Role
Mark Todd, Labour MP and a former IT director, has told E-Health Insider that he believes the current management structure for the National Programme for IT in the NHS "appears rather cloudy" and "is not the optimum arrangement". He says greater clarity over lines of accountability and leadership may be needed. The former head of […]
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Panther Takes Aim at Citrix in Health
The DAT Group has launched to the healthcare market Panther Server 2002, as an affordable alternative to Citrix Metaframe, and has appointed Centrom as its exclusive partner for the healthcare IT market. Like Citrix, Panther is a new Enterprise Management Platform for remotely delivering and managing Windows-based applications to client desktops across a network. Leading […]
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Live Testing of NHS Electronic Staff Records Begins
The live testing of a new national pay and personnel system for the, was launched on Friday at University Hospital Birmingham by Health Minister, Lord Philip Hunt. The National Shared Services Initiative’s Electronic Staff Record (ESR) will deliver an integrated human resources and payroll system across England and Wales, replacing the range of outdated systems […]
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Green Light for New Shared Services Authority
The NHS Shared Services Initiative, which is responsible for shared NHS financial services, the finance and e-commerce project and the development of the electronic staff record, has received approval to establish itself as a special health authority. The new authority will come into being in April 2003. The announcement about the change of status says […]
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