Healthcare IT news in brief

Go-lives

McKesson continues digital imaging deployment in Ireland

Clontarf Hospital is the 40th site in Ireland to go-live with Mckesson’s digital imaging solution as part of the National Integrated Medical Imaging System programme and the last of the country's film-based sites. Part of the Health Service Executive’s Transformation Programme, NIMIS is a national project that in 2010 selected McKesson to provide the nationally integrated picture archive communication system and radiology information system. A fully integrated speech recognition system for the production of radiology reports is also being implemented.

New software allows patients easier access to emergency prescriptions

New software developed by the NHS Wales Informatics Service will allow patients to obtain emergency repeat medicines directly from a participating community pharmacy, reducing demands on the out-of-hours services. The software will be used to record the medicines dispensed and to share that information with the patient's GP. Information about the emergency medication dispensed will also be available to other pharmacies. The service will be trialled during the spring with roll out across Wales later this year.

SystmOne live in the Isle of Wight

The first Isle of Wight GP practice, Sandown Health Centre, went live with TPP’s SystmOne on 11 April. The island’s clinical commissioning group underwent a systems assessment for its 16 GP practices last year as a ‘mini’ competition, selecting TPP as its supplier of choice. All practices are moving to SystmOne under the GPSoC framework. The remaining deployments are due to take place in the coming months, with all practices due to be live by early autumn.

Insignia starts data migration for Oxford University Hospitals

Insignia Medical Systems has started a 100TB migration of data for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as part of a contract to provide the trust with its full suite of picture archiving and communications systems products. The migration of OUH’s historical data will be one of the largest undertaken in the UK, with over 100TB of data being transferred using the Insignia Migration Service.

Hospital news

St Vincent’s University Hospital Dublin goes with the Flow

Servelec Healthcare has been appointed as the preferred supplier for the inpatient journey solution at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin. Flow will provide frontline staff and clinicians with an electronic visual representation of current bed status across the hospital, from admission to discharge. Dermot Cullinan, IT Director at the Dublin hospital, said: “we need to know where our patients are at every part of the journey, and who is involved in their care on a 24 hour by seven day per week basis.

The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust saves man hours with Advanced

The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has reported it is saving 70 man hours a week after deploying Advanced Cloud Invoicing;moving from paper-based invoice processing to an automated electronic system. Advanced Cloud Invoicing enables suppliers to send invoices directly to an email address, where they are converted into files that can automatically be recorded into the organisation’s finance system. The invoice is scanned using code, which has significantly reduced the number of queries that the trust’s finance team receives.  

Research

Professional bodies announce scoping report 

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, IHRIM: the Institute for Health Records and Information Management and Socitm have announced the start of a scoping report to analyse the current skills frameworks which exist in the health and care informatics. The scoping report will be commissioned and hosted by BCS and overseen by all the professional bodies. The report will draw on a wide range of expertise from the community, and an open workshop will be held on 4 July to gather ideas and evidence.

Intelesant seeks stroke patients in Greater Manchester for app research

Intelesant has been awarded a grant by Greater Manchester Academic Health Science Network to carry out research using its home monitoring technology system, Howz, with stroke patients. The grant will fund an eight-month research project between Howz and Sarah Tyson, professor of rehabilitation at the University of Manchester to test the feasibility of the Howz app as a tool to reduce social isolation and the risk of physical decline in stroke patients.

Industry updates

New global collaboration between GS1 and IHTSDO 

GS1 and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization have signed a collaborative agreement that supports interoperability in health information systems globally. GS1’s Global Trade Item Numbers are global standards for automatic product identification, through barcodes, and IHTSDO’s SNOMED CT is a global standard that ensures semantically accurate clinical terminology for consistent use across health systems and services. “Ensuring that these two standards can work together will facilitate the link between clinical information in the patient record and the correct product administered to the patient at point of care, enabled by barcode scanning,” a statement from the organisations says.