Coronavirus spending has exceeded £32 billion. 18,000 more nurses are now working in the NHS than last year, as the NHS celebrates its 72nd birthday. NHS England’s chief has called for urgent social care reform. ePrescribing has seen huge growth throughout the Covid-19 crisis. The role of EPRs is being questioned. A new PACS has been delivered to professionals in East Lancashire. New Covid online services and dashboards have been launched. And a new technology is needed for home testing.
The UK’s excess death rate finally stabilised, after reaching 65,200 from the start of the coronavirus outbreak. But the economic and public health impact of the pandemic started to become apparent as firms announced significant job losses and the government flagged the end of its furlough scheme and the resumption of benefit sanctions.
Telehealth leaders thanked British Gas drivers for delivering monitoring devices to Liverpool during the outbreak. NHS Somerset NHS Foundation Trust went live with the Better e-prescribing solution, OPENeP. And lots of people went running, using Couch to 5k.
The English government announced a significant easing of coronavirus restrictions, as it emerged that the failed contact tracing app programme has cost £11.8 million and the test and trace programme could be missing as many as two thirds of new Covid-19 cases.
National digital organisations and trusts continued to develop and adopt a range of health tech responses. And Highland Marketing’s advisory board discussed the challenges that new entrants and SMEs face in getting innovation to the health service.
Healthcare Roundup 10 July 2020