Healthcare IT news in brief

This week’s healthcare IT round-up focuses on software deployments, including the addition of electronic referrals to palliative care from Cumbria’s e-referral service, but also includes news of a lab system launch by InterSystems.

InterSystems launches LBMS

InterSystems has announced the launch of a Laboratory Business Management System that is fully integrated with its electronic patient record, TrakCare. The system, TrakCare Lab Enterprise, is being implemented at two TrakCare customers in England, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust.

The system is designed to help laboratories cope with the rapid changes they are facing as a result of consolidation and specialisation, the new demands of an ageing population, and the arrival of genomics and other new forms of medicine. It is intended to help streamline repetitive tasks, improve visibility of the testing process, and feedback results directly to the EPR.

Cumbria adds Palliative care e-referrals to its e-referral programme

Electronic referrals to hospices have been added to Cumbria and Lancashire’s electronic referral system, enabling patients who are near the end of their life to be more quickly referred from specialist palliative care teams at Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust to local hospices.

Palliative care e-referrals is the latest element in an ambitious plan to implement e-Referrals across Cumbria, often referred to as ‘air traffic control.’ The development and roll-out of e-referrals in the area is being backed by funding from the local clinical commissioning group and academic health science networks.

Servelec wins Dublin hospital contract

Servelec Healthcare has been appointed as the preferred supplier for a patient and bed management system for St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin with its Flow product, which gives frontline staff and clinicians an electronic, visual representation of current bed status across a hospital with a view to improving efficiency.

Southport and Ormskirk latest to offer patients wi-fi

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has launched a new wi-fi service on a patient pay model; with the first 15 minutes free each day. The service is provided by Hospedia in conjunction with The Cloud, which have an offer for hospitals that includes a customised landing page and feedback functionality for the Family and Friends Test.

New HR portal for blood service

NHS Blood and Transplant has outsourced its HR management system, using arvato's HR Direct portal to communicate with its 5,500 staff. Staff at the service – which provides blood deliveries, blood-based therapies and organ donation services – will have access to all employee information, forms and help through one online portal accessible through a phone or tablet. HR Direct is already used by ten health organisations in the UK.

West Midlands trust upgrades asset management software

Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership NHS Trust will use Real Asset Management’s software to better manage its £86m of assets. The west Midlands trust will use the capital accounting product to replace as system based largely on spreadsheets. The switch came as the trust found its legacy systems were struggling to meet international reporting financial standards and Department of Health Group Manual for Accounts reporting requirements.