Pay offer made to Agenda for Change staff The government has said that “following constructive talks with health unions” an improved pay offer has been made to the 1 million staff on Agenda for Change pay scales – which includes nurses, midwifes, ambulance staff, and ancillary staff (junior doctors are not covered). The offer is a mix of one-off payments and salary increases, including an “NHS backlog bonus” recognising pressure and recovery efforts. Strike action has been paused while unions consider the offer. If it is accepted, the next question is who will pay for it, as an unfunded resolution to the pay dispute will put additional pressure on NHS finances (Sky News).

Government publishes NHS cyber security strategy The government has published a new strategy to “promote cyber resilience across the health and care sectors.” The cyber security strategy for health and adult social care sets out five “pillars” to minimise the risk of cyber attacks and recover from any that happen. These pillars are: to identify the areas in which disruption would cause greatest harm to patients; taking co-ordinated action; improving leadership and training; embedding security into emerging technology; and supporting organisations “to minimise the impact and recovery time from a cyber incident.” The Department of Health and Social Care says a detailed implementation plan will follow this summer.

EPR news: go-lives for Epic at The Royal Marsden and Sunrise at Worcestershire Acute The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust has become the latest trust to go-live with the Epic electronic patient record, as part of a project that it calls Connect (Health Tech Newspaper). The deployment includes a website and app for patients, called MyMarsden. Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has also gone live with a new EPR – in this case, Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise. Health Tech World reported that the go-live happened in January, when the system was deployed across the trust’s three hospitals and 56 inpatient wards. The deployment includes tracking boards to improve the visibility of patients and electronic noting.

Health IT news: Scotland looks for a pre-op prep platform; Wales plans a usability survey, trusts deploy apps, and the CMA looks at UnitedHealth’s plans to buy EMIS NHS National Services Scotland has issued a prior information notice for an online pre-op assessment and triage platform to optimise theatre capacity and productivity. The new tool must capable of enabling patients to complete an online questionnaire, clinicians to triage their lists, and theatre managers to optimise scheduling (Health Tech Newspaper). Digital Health and Care Wales is going to launch a digital systems usability survey, digitalhealth.net has reported. The survey will go live on Monday and ask staff to share their views on the clinical IT. The output will be a scorecard for participating organisations and support to act on the results.   NHS Lincolnshire has launched a WaitLess app to give people living in its area live access to urgent and emergency care waiting times and queue numbers (HTN). Loughborough urgent treatment centre has deployed the eTriage system from eConsult to speed up the assessment of patients and reduce queues (DHI). The Scottish Health Technology Group has recommended AliveCor’s KardiaMobile personal ECG monitoring solution as an option for detecting and monitoring atrial fibrillation (Health Tech World). The UK Competition and Markets Authority is taking an interest in UnitedHealth’s £1.2 billion bid to buy EMIS, because it could reduce competition in the data analytics and medicines management markets (digitalhealth.net).

Thought leadership from Highland Marketing clients Mindray, Net Solving, and Parsek Kelly Calvert, chief nursing information officer at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, has been explaining why technology needs to support efficient workflows for busy staff. The trust has been working with Mindray to create a vital signs patient monitor (Health Tech World). Martin Dean, system architect for CaseCapture has been explaining why he keeps his mum – an NHS nurse - in mind when creating technology for clinical audit (Hospital Hub). Parsek has been reflecting on the Digital Health Rewired 2023 conference and its focus on collaboration and making it easier for staff to work together across integrated care systems (Parsek website).