NHS Direct launches SMS service
NHS Direct has launched a new text messaging service that allows users to obtain details of local health facilities. Anyone wishing to find their nearest GP, dentist, pharmacy, optician, walk-in centre, A&E or hospital in England can text the name of the service required, followed by a postcode, to 61121. A text message will be […]
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NHSmail promotes free SMS for reminders
NHSmail users are being encouraged to use the system’s free text messaging to remind patients about healthcare appointments. Contractors, Cable & Wireless’ head of frameworks, Ian Fowler, told E-Health Insider: “Since we launched the NHSmail service, we have seen the use of the SMS functionality grow. Currently we are seeing around 250,000 texts sent across the service […]
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EHI’s industry news round-up 26.10.07
E-Health Insider’s industry news round up for the week ending 26 October, featuring supplier news, product launches, acquisitions and events. News in Brief St Luke’s Hospital, Oxford installs Agfa PACS St. Luke’s Hospital, based in Headington, Oxford has recently installed Agfa HealthCare’s Web 1000 PACS solution, helping to improve both workflow and patient care. The […]
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Lewisham cuts missed appointments with SMS
Lewisham PCT has reduced the number of missed appointments in 16 practices by 27% by using text message appointment reminders from the iPlato Patient Care Messaging software. The PCT which first started using iPlato last July now has 43% of its patients signed up to use the service. The PCT attributes the fall in missed […]
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iPlato deploy SMS to Hammersmith and Fulham PCT
Health text messaging specialists iPlato have agreed a deal to provide their patient care messaging service to 26 doctors’ surgeries in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham covering over 165,000 patients. The deal is iPlato’s largest deployment to date and will allow patients to interact with their surgery via mobile text messaging on a […]
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Safety technology needed to protect nurses, says RCN
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is calling for the NHS to fund mobile devices to enable community nurses working alone to summon help after it found more than one in three have been assaulted or harassed in the last two years. The RCN this week launched a campaign, You’re Not Alone, to press the government to […]
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Careful and cautious progress on Electronic Prescriptions
Tim Donohoe, the head of the NHS Electronic Prescriptions Service programme, tells Fiona Barr why progress will remain ‘careful and cautious’.
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TPP develops text messaging service
Primary care and community healthcare IT providers, TPP, have introduced text messaging to work alongside their flagship SystmOne solution. The solution has been piloted by Holycroft Surgery, a GP surgery in Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust which was also the first GP practice to use SystmOne. Using the text messaging addition, the surgery can send […]
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Voicemails prompt patients to pick up medicine
A message system that enables pharmacists to leave an automatically-generated voicemail for patients whose prescriptions are ready for collection is to be offered by a major pharmacy systems supplier. Message Dynamics has reached a heads of agreement to integrate its messaging system with Cegedim Rx’s Pharmacy Manager and Nexphase. The agreement covers two Message Dynamics products: the Repeat Rx […]
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Islington PCT uses texts for stop smoking campaign
GP surgeries in Islington, London, are using SMS text messaging software from suppliers iPlato to promote its smoking cessation campaigns. Islington practices using the iPlato text messaging system have reported patient response rates of 30%, compared to a response rate of 5% when they used letters. The practices using the system have sent text messages […]
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