UK deaths to exceed births by 2025 The natural population of the UK will begin to decline by the middle of the decade, much earlier than predicted, projections released by the Office for National Statistics have suggested. The Financial Times reported this week that the population of the UK is aging faster than expected and this, coupled with falling birth rates, could mean there are more deaths than births by 2025. The historic shift will put more pressure on working age people to fund pensions, NHS and social care; unless the impacts are offset by immigration, effective policies to support families, or measures to improve healthy life expectancy.

NHS and social care facing workforce crisis – MPs The NHS and social care “face the greatest workforce crisis in their history”, the Commons health and social care committee has warned. The committee, chaired by former health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt, has issued a report warning that “persistent understaffing poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety” but the government has “shown a marked reluctance to act decisively.” Hunt wants the government to deliver on existing workforce targets, to address low pay, sort out consultant tax and pension issues, and develop a proper workforce plan. “This must be a top priority for the new prime minister,” he said.

WHO issues alert on monkeypox, NHS steps up vaccination, NHS England publishes long-Covid plan  The World Health Organisation declared monkeypox ‘a public health emergency of international concern’ – its highest level of alert - as confirmed cases rose to 16,000 in 75 countries. NHS England says public health teams are stepping up vaccination efforts for at-risk groups, particularly in London. NHS England has published a plan for long-Covid, which the ONS estimates is affecting 1.6 million people in England and the IFS estimates is costing £1.5 billion a year in lost earnings. The plan aims to get patients a diagnosis in six weeks and to provide more support in the community. The NHS Confederation welcomed the move, saying existing clinics are “swamped by demand.”

NHS England looks for partners to deliver frontline digitisation, digital maturity assessment, and heart failure @home NHS England’s transformation directorate has opened a procurement process to find a delivery partner for its Frontline Digitisation programme. The Health Tech Newspaper reports that NHS England is looking to provide advice, support and expertise to organisations working on electronic patient record programmes to meet the latest EPR targets. NHS England is also looking for a supplier to deliver a new digital maturity programme based on the What Good Looks Like framework developed by NHSX. And it is looking for early adopters for a heart failure @home programme, using remote monitoring and self-management tools.

Trust IT news: Herts trust renews Lorenzo contract; Birmingham Women’s picks Citadel Health LIMS; Royal Orthopaedic Hospital picks GE Healthcare/AWS PACS; two London trusts suffer IT failures East and North Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust has awarded a £2.8 million, three-year contract to Dedalus to use the Lorenzo electronic patient record that Dedalus acquired when it bought DXC Healthcare in April last year. The trust deployed Lorenzo in 2017 (historic digitalhealth.net report). Dedalus has announced that it will be switching its UK EPR offer from Lorenzo to Orbis. Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has announced that it will deploy Citadel Health’s Evolution vLab laboratory information management system across its pathology services. The trust says this will increase security and resilience and help it to meet climate goals (digitalhealth.net).   The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has announced that it will be an early adopter of GE Healthcare’s cloud-based picture archiving and communications system. The Edison True PACS is the result of a partnership between the company and Amazon Web Services (digitalhealth.net). Less positively, two further trusts have suffered major IT outages. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust saw systems fail last week as a result of the heatwave (digitalhealth.net) (updates on the trust’s Twitter account). While Bart’s Health NHS Trust lost access to some systems this week (Health Service Journal).