EHI’s industry news roundup 02.11.07

E-Health Insider’s industry news round up for the week ending 2 November, featuring supplier news, implementations, product launches, awards and events.

Supplier News

Spire Healthcare take over BUPA hospitals

Spire Healthcare, the new independent healthcare group, formerly BUPA hospitals, is planning to grow its business as it builds on its position as a leading player in the private hospital market. New Spire Hospital signs went up this week at the front of the 25 UK sites, previously owned by the BUPA Group, and chief executive Clare Hollingsworth says the firm has big ambitions.

Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children get DH grant for video conferencing

A video conferencing pilot at Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children has secured a two year £130,000 grant from the Department of Health to extend the use of the technology to treat babies and small children with major heart conditions at home, following a successful three year trial. The grant will allow for the project to be extended to foetal scans and for ante-natal diagnoses of congenital heart conditions. 

SearchMedica expands service to mark 1st birthday

SearchMedica.co.uk, the medical search engine, is celebrating its first birthday by announcing improvements to the functionality of the GP-focused search engine. Results are now presented with the most recent, as well as the most relevant information first, the favoured ‘sites chosen by GPs’ search option has now been streamlined to give more results from trusted sites used daily by GPs and result categories have been revised. At the same time, they are also launching SearchMedica.co.uk to three new healthcare groups – nurses, pharmacists and medical students.

Cisco and Satyam announce global collaboration for integrated health solutions

Cisco and Satyam Computer Services have announced that they are collaborating to explore a new venture that will optimise, deploy and manage solutions for handling medical distress situations and health management solutions for global markets. The venture, in which Cisco has expressed a strategic intent to make a minority investment, is being pursued as part of Cisco’s extended $100m venture program targeting Indian innovation.

Implementations

Imprivata deploy single sign on at Tameside and Glossop

Imprivata, identity and access management appliance specialists has begun rolling out password management and strong authentication using its OneSign appliance at Tameside and Glossop Acute Services NHS Trust. The deployment has already gone into production use in the Trust’s Radiology department, and will be implemented across the rest of the organisation during the next six months. On completion, the Trust’s 1000 employees will benefit by not being locked out of applications due to forgotten passwords and overall improvement of workflows.

Welsh hospitals upgrade pharmacy systems

An upgraded hospital pharmacy system has gone live at Bronglais General Hospital and in Aberystwyth and at Velindre Hospital in Cardiff, with roll-out across Wales on track for mid-2008.Changes included a complete rewrite of the system software and provision of new centrally-managed servers.

University Hospital Birmingham speeds up email retrievals

University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) has implemented Autonomy Zantaz Enterprise Archiving Solution (EAS) to efficiently manage its rapidly growing email volumes in line with regulatory requirements. With EAS, UHB was able to shorten its email retrieval process from weeks to minutes. Autonomy Zantz’ partner, Essential Computing, was the systems integrator for the project. Since implementing the archiving system end-user performance has improved and demand on core storage has been curtailed significantly.

London Oncology Clinic uses online backup for patient records

London Oncology Clinic is using secure online backup from Databarracks in an effort to deliver outstanding patient care. The clinic contracted Databarracks to move its backup online, and currently has 1.5 Terabytes of data stored across its 11 HP servers backed up with Databarracks. As the data is compressed for transport, this is shrunk to 325 gigabytes stored in Databarracks’ facility, introducing significant cost and time savings.

Product Launches

NEC launches new medical imaging display screen range

NEC Display Solutions has launched the new MDview series, designed to serve the medical imaging market with inexpensive LCD colour displays which satisfy the highest demands. The successful MDview 192 is now being replaced with a new 19 inch LCD colour display. Its successor, the MDview 193, is very well suited both for filmless viewing and also in PACS applications, and for general management tasks in the medical environment. Areas of application range from digital viewing of x-ray and cross-sectional CAT images, MRT and nuclear medicine through endoscopy to 3D representations for pre-operative planning.

NHS launch series of products to bring care closer to home

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has launched a suite of new products to help commissioners and health care leaders bring about change – as set out in the white paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say. The products are a series of tools and approaches, which capture the learning from pilot activities that took place with a wide range of health commissioners and providers. They are designed to help move from a traditional model of hospital-based services towards a more adaptive community-based approach.

Awards

NHS Shared Business Services wins outsourcing award

NHS Shared Business Services has been named outsourcing service provider of the year at the National Outsourcing Association Awards. The joint venture between Xansa and theDepartment of Health was chosen for its cost and time efficiency – as well as its impact on improving clinical care.

Eurodata nominated for Computing Award

Eurodata Systems has been nominated for the Computing Awards for Excellence: IT Services Supplier of the Year for their installation of Microsoft’s intelligent application gateway technology at Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust has provided radiologists with a remote service, giving them out-of-hours network access and boosting the level of service to patients.

Events

E-Health Insider’s Healthcare IT Careers Forum – 30 November 07

Healthcare IT specialists and IT professionals considering a move into the health sector will have an unrivalled opportunity to meet prospective employers at the Healthcare IT Careers Forum, organised by E-Health Insider. The forum will be held on 30 November 2007 from 10.30am to 7pm at the Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BE. Register free at www.healthcareersforum.com.

World Usability Day – London Event

On 8 November, London will play host to two free events to commemorate this year’s World Usability Day in conjunction with the Usability Professionals Association. In the day, an event will be hosted about designing effective software and products in the healthcare space. The day will be aimed more at healthcare professionals, user experience specialists in healthcare, but also those working within industries that share common issues. To register, please visit the event page at positiveexperiences.eventbrite.com.

Joe Fernandez