Healthcare Roundup

Seven days in the NHS and health IT

Truss hints she will divert elective recovery money to social care

Polling indicates that Liz Truss is likely to win the Conservative Party leadership contest (The Guardian). The campaign has been criticised for its lack of focus on big issues, such as the ‘cost of living crisis’, a wave of strikes, and the extreme pressure faced by the NHS. But this week Truss told a hustings she would divert £13 billion earmarked for elective recovery to social care. Think-tanks said this would be “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and leave managers with “impossible choices” (The Guardian). Truss has also talked about scrapping the health and care levy entirely as part of her tax-cutting appeal to the Conservative electorate (iNews).

NHS Scotland issues climate and sustainability strategy

The NHS in Scotland has issued a climate and sustainability strategy to support its ambition to reach net-zero by 2040 at the latest. The strategy has five themes: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and adapting the NHS estate to cope with the impact of climate change; reducing the need to travel and promoting active travel and public transport when it is unavoidable; buying better and improving recycling; focusing on sustainable care; and supporting the health, wellbeing and resilience of communities. Health tech can reduce the need for travel; but will need to look at its own supply chain.

Health news: Routine Covid-19 tests ‘paused’; competition opens for net zero ideas; Unison starts pay campaign that could lead to industrial action

Routine tests for Covid-19 have been paused and most hospital and care home staff, patients and residents will not be tested unless they have symptoms, the Department of Health and Social Care has announced (BBC News). NHS England has launched a competition with SBRI Healthcare to find innovations that can reduce carbon emissions and improve care for patients (NHS England blog, with links to the competition site). Unison has launched a ‘Pledge Yes for the NHS’ campaign to gather support for industrial action in October, if the government refuses to reopen pay negotiations (Unison website).

NHS systems still impacted by cyber attack on Advanced

Advanced has issued a status update on the impact of the cyber-attack on its systems, which led to a major outage at the start of the month, digitalhealth.net has reported. The company is working through assurance and phased reintroduction processes for its Adastra software, which is used by 85% of NHS 111 providers, Carenotes, which is used by mental health trusts, Caresys and Crossnotes, which are used by care homes and hospices, and its decision support, HR and finance software. Although coverage of the outage has focused on mental health services, there is concern that it could impact NHS 111 over the busy bank holiday weekend (Daily Mail).

Health IT company news: for Lyniate, CCube Solutions, IMMJ Systems, Nervecentre, NHS England, and Dignio

Lyniate has announced that its Rhapsody integration engine has been chosen by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to support its encompass programme (Health Tech World). Rhapsody will integrate the Epic electronic patient record with other IT systems to support the vision of a single digital health and care record for every citizen. CCube Solutions has announced that NHS Forth Valley has completed a project to upgrade its electronic document and records management system (Health Tech Newspaper). The move to a web-based EDMS is part of a health board strategy to integrate numerous IT systems through a clinical portal.

IMMJ Systems has announced that it has secured a ten-year contract from Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust for an electronic document management system (digitalhealth.net). Scanned documents will be integrated into the trust’s electronic patient record, Advanced’s CareDirector. Nervecentre has announced that East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust has deployed its digital care plans at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage (HTN). The hospital uses a Dedalus electronic patient record system, but is using Nervecentre to run its emergency department, and for e-observations and clinical alerts. Recording care plans and assessments electronically should reduce time and improve communication between clinical teams.

NHS England has announced that it will turn on automatic access to GP records on 1 November, with some ‘customisation’ for how and when sensitive information is shared (Daily Mail). NHS England hopes that giving patients automatic access to appointments and test results through the NHS App will reduce demand on surgery phone lines. Dignio has announced that it has been working with AliveCor to integrate the KardiaMobile device into the MyDignio smartphone app (Health Tech World). The development will make it easier for patients to send ECGs to clinicians and support a pioneering virtual ward for patients with atrial fibrillation developed with University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.

Creating the digital health workforce of the future

Highland Marketing Blog

How are trusts and health tech suppliers going to find the people they need to develop deploy and optimise critical clinical information systems in the future? Highland Marketing’s advisory board invited Paul Rice from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to outline how he has been thinking about the challenge.