Features
August 2010
Renegotiations source value for money
for Hertfordshire adult services
In the most challenging
financial climate in decades, how can councils reform their
outgoings and increase efficiencies? Hertfordshire County Council,
through seeking value for money and the renegotiation of care costs,
has done just that. Iain MacBeath explores the
council’s journey. August 2010
Brighton and Hove Integrated Care
Service develops bespoke system for patient referral
BICS
developed a tailor-made patient management system to enable
intelligent data capture from primary care providers and, linking
with the NHS Choose and Book system, ensure patients are referred to
the best available care provider within strict timescales. August
2010
July 2010
Buying green IT
Information technology is accounting for an increasing amount of
global energy use and industrial waste. For purchasers, however,
making 'green decisions' is difficult and complex due to the lack of
clear data and policies on labelling and manufacturing. Gary Price of VAR Probrand explores the migration of the green
agenda into IT procurement. July 2010
How to improve information
governance and patient care
Information governance
is the framework for ensuring that the right people have access to
the right data for patient care. This is complex in practice due to
the many points of care that each patient can encounter and the
multiple disparate records and rules that these create. Wayne Parslow of Carefx gives advice on how to take the right
approach. July 2010
June 2010
TCO Certification — choosing
IT products for low environmental impact and high performance
Birgitta Halvarsson of TCO
Development describes the evolution of the TCO certification system
from indicating the safety of computer monitors to the latest TCO
Certified label launched in 2009 that encompasses a wider range of
IT products with stricter environmental and usability requirements
and also social responsibility. June 2010
Bank is dead, long live the
bank
The latest generation of hospital staff
management systems is revolutionising the way NHS trusts use their
internal and external staff banks, says Nick Whiteley.
Smart rostering solutions that streamline processes to enable rapid
deployment of staff and meet work–life balance demands are now
available and are set to change the future of the bank department.
June 2010
Opinion:
Consolidate the supply chain to streamline business and save costs
Steve
Nicholls of CSA Waverley argues that healthcare
organisations can save money in IT procurement in terms of cost of
products, maintenance and accounting administration by outsourcing
procurement as a managed service. June 2010
Opinion: Advantages of delivering healthcare business process management
systems in the Cloud
Business process management (BPM) delivered as software-as-a-service
(SaaS) in the Cloud is changing the game in terms of flexible
patient management and workflow systems. New BPM solutions can be
deployed in less than 2 months and at a fraction of the cost of
adapting an off-the-shelf solution. Ingolv Urnes of
psHEALTH looks at how independent healthcare service providers are
using BPM to model, execute and continuously improve processes in
the Cloud. June 2010
Streamlined ward working —
live bed status, multidisciplinary handover and electronic vital
sign documentation
The study evaluated a one-ward
pilot of “streamlined ward working”, comprising electronic vital
sign recording using personal data assistants, an electronic bed
management system, electronic multi-disciplinary handover
documentation and tablet computers to view vital sign charts at the
bedside. Gemma Wint, Sarah Rodenhurst and
Bryony
Dean Franklin of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
May 2010
20-20 vision for health and
care
The public love their NHS Hospitals and will
fight to the end to 'save' them. What the public do not easily
accept is that there are alternative ways of delivering care.
Dr J Sandy Bradbrook argues for a new approach to
health and care delivery. May 2010
Patient level costing:
the most common questions
Patient-level costing (PLC) data is a critical tool for NHS trusts
looking to optimise their performance and ensure best use of
available funding and resources. But how should it be used for best
effect? David Beeson of Ardentia answers the key questions. May 2010
E-learning — the marriage of
technology and education
A relatively new strategy
within clinical education, e-learning is becoming an increasingly
utilised way of teaching new clinical techniques. However, the
marriage of education and technology can be difficult to get right.
Dr Nicholas Blackwell of the University of
Leicester Medical School has this advice for those in the medical
profession who are considering using e-learning as a teaching tool.
May 2010
April 2010
The financial challenges of an
ageing demographic
It has become apparent from the
Audit Commission that most local authorities (LAs) are not preparing
for the financial challenges of an ageing population. It is
imperative that local authorities prepare to overcome the increasing
financial pressures and budget cuts surrounding the social care
sector. But how can they plan ahead? Arlene Adams
of OLM Systems explores how the use of technology and changes in
working practises can help LAs provide more cost effective and time
efficient services to their adult community. April 2010
Breakthroughs with sensing in
the human body
Dr Peter Harrop of
IDTechEx outlines recent advances in overcoming the problems of
body-area wireless technology and power supply for implanted
devices. April 2010
Opinion: Security weaknesses
in NHS information systems
Securing access to NHS IT
systems with a smartcard may be considered an adequate level of
security, but what if the smartcard system itself is easily
compromised. IT security consultant Phil Colledge highlights some
basic weaknesses in controlling access to NHS information systems.
April 2010
Best practices in healthcare
facilities capital planning
In hard economic times
it is important for healthcare organisations to streamline their
capital planning and budgeting processes and make well informed
spending decisions and action plans. By using the right tools, says
Michael Kwok of VFA, Inc, healthcare organisations can make the most
effective use of assets and prioritise those expenditures that best
support patient care. April 2010
King's College Hospital
improves knowledge collaboration for the King's Health Partners AHSC
Paul Michaels of METRI Business Consultants
describes how King's College Hospital reviewed its clinical
information management infrastructure and IT services support to
facilitate knowledge collaboration with the King’s Health Partners
Academic Health Sciences Centre. April 2010
March 2010
Demystifying IT risk to
achieve greater security and compliance
Effective
IT risk management increases network security, reduces management
costs and achieves greater compliance. The challenge is in
identifying where IT risks are and creating a repeatable process to identify,
assess and remediate without interrupting business activities.
Alan Bentley of Lumension provides a guide on how
to achieve this and communicate with the board to get stakeholder
support.
Compliant disposal of data and
IT equipment
The proper disposal of obsolete or ‘end
of life’ computer equipment is no longer a case of simply throwing
it in the skip. Organisations now have responsibilities under data
protection legislation and the EC’s 2007 WEEE Directive to ensure
that equipment is properly disposed of or comprehensively recycled.
Chris Avis of Barron McCann explains.
Cloud computing brings wind of
change to IT departments
Cloud computing gives the
end-user complete control over their client–server, web-based, and
computing solutions, allowing them to choose what they use, where
they use it, and where they get solutions from. IT departments will
have to adapt to providing smarter services.
Case study: Data centre
rationalisation unlocks shared services for 22 Welsh Health Boards
NHS Wales Business Services Centre consolidated the National Health
Application and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS) system serving the
22 local health boards onto two sites, reducing the server
'footprint' by 80%, giving 30% power savings, 60% savings in
maintenance and improving processing throughput by 600%.
Opinion: Time for the NHS to recognise
the benefits of videoconferencing
Steve
Woollett of Tandberg argues that the benefits of
videoconfencing technology for clinical, training and administrative
uses are so overwhelming that the NHS should take a strategic view
to adopt it at a national level.
Identifying new market
opportunities in telecare and telehealth
The ageing
population and the high demand for long-term care require the delivery
of more effective and efficient care. Technology-based products and
services are increasingly being viewed as a potential solution to
the increasing pressure on care services. This will generate new
market opportunities in telecare and telehealth says Katy
Lethbridge of the South East Health Technologies Alliance.
February 2010
Usability issues of user manuals provided with medical devices
A user survey conducted in this study highlights user attitude, manual
availability, textual complexity and language support as major
issues relevant to user manuals. It shows there is a need to design easily
understandable user manuals and make them available to users. Therefore, healthcare administrators, medical users, designers and device
manufacturers should understand as well as address the usability
issues of user manuals to provide safer and improved patient care.
By Asst Prof Ganesh Bhutkar of the Vishwakarma
Institute of Technology, Pune, India, et al. Feb 2010
Taking ehealth to the hospital patient
Warren Kressinger-Dunn of Jaotech explains why smart terminals
installed at hospital bedsides are the ideal solution for taking
ehealth to the hospital patient. Feb 2010
Solid state storage: improving
healthcare information systems Texas style
Neil Ekker compares the slow adoption of
solid-state storage in the healthcare sector to the Texan rancher
tradition of buying horsepower by the pound rather than suitability
for the task. Feb 2010
Dorset NHS Trust reduces data
centre space and power demand with virtualisation
Dorset HealthCare NHS Foundation Trust (DHFT) had a pressing need
for data centre space to meet growing requirements. However, with a
limited power supply on site, expanding the data centre was not
possible as the main power phase was stretched to the limit.
Virtualisation was the key to more efficient use of servers, power
and space. Feb 2010
It's time for the hospital doctor to embrace IT
Dr Paul Shannon argues that hospital doctors should emulate their GP
colleagues and make full use of IT for the benefits it can bring in
improving healthcare. Feb 2010
January 2010
In search of new healthcare
frontiers
Dr Kathy
McLean of NHS East Midlands looks at how healthcare
providers can make best use of the £220m innovation funding from the
Department of Health to improve working practices and deliver high
quality patient care.
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