EHI celebrates 400th newsletter

E-Health Insider is issuing the 400th edition of its weekly healthcare IT newsletter this week.

The newsletter is distributed to more than 24,000 people, including policy makers, suppliers, IT teams, clinicians and others with an interest in healthcare IT and the use of information in the health service.

Over eight years, the newsletter has covered some of the biggest stories both inside and outside the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

Jon Hoeksma, editor and co-founder of E-Health Insider, said: “A lot has changed since we launched E-Health Insider in December 2001.

"In newsletter number one, we reported that health secretary Alan Milburn had promised more money for NHS IT, after meeting Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates.

“As we now know, that meeting was instrumental in forming what became the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which we have followed closely – some would say obsessively – ever since.”

In a recent EHI readership survey of more than 600 people, 78% of newsletter readers rated the newsletter as being ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Eighty per cent of participants said they read it every week and a further 15% every month.

Comments from survey participants included: “E-Health Insider is an excellent piece of work – one of the best I have seen in any field.”

And: “E-Health Insider has proved an invaluable tool to my professional working life over the last two to three years. Keep pumping out the truth. Everyone else seems to be lying.”

In addition, 83% of survey participants rated EHI as being first with news, with its best news coverage being of national politics and policy and industry news.

Hoeksma added: “E-Health Insider has been privileged to report on what has gone right and what has gone wrong in meeting the challenge of digitising the NHS over 400 editions.

"We look forward to continuing to report on the work of suppliers and customers over many more editions to come. Who knows what the news will be by edition 500, in two years’ time?”