EHI’s news roundup 27.06.08

E-Health Insider’s news round up for the week ending 27 June 2008 featuring supplier news, awards and information on newly published research reports.

Supplier news

NHS Choices launches women’s health guide

NHS Choices launched a new guide to women’s health in the age bracket of 18-39, aimed at helping women find out more about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The guide is based on NHS accredited information. The women’s health 18-39 bundle

The guide provides users with information about walking to get healthy, looking after their sexual health, stopping smoking and cutting down on alcohol.

North sea oil workers use telemedicine ECG for cardiac diagnosis

Abermed, medical services provider to the North Sea oil and gas industry, has deployed a telemedical ECG service from telemedicine specialist Broomwell Healthwatch to 20 rigs across the North Sea to help offshore medics diagnose coronary blood clots and correctly administer medication to treat the problem on-site as part of their 24/7 offshore emergency service cover.

Oracle forms health sciences unit

Oracle has announced the formation of the Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit. The unit will help health sciences organisations discover, develop and successfully market innovative products & services to prevent and cure disease. Oracle says its application platform for health sciences already helps companies bring together all the critical aspects of the clinical development, safety and pharmacovigilance processes into a single, open platform built on state-of-the-art technology.

Imprivata deploy single sign-on at Newcastle

Identity and access management appliance specialist, Imprivata, has announced that Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has chosen Imprivata OneSign to provide strong authentication and single sign-on for the trust’s 11,000 clinical and administrative staff, improving productivity and removing password management issues. OneSign will also integrate with the Trust’s building access systems allowing them to create and enforce a single security policy for both IT network and physical access.

NHS launch new electronic marketplace service

ProcServe, a provider of procurement and marketplace connectivity solutions, has announced the availability of their customised electronic marketplace service for the NHS – NHS eTrade. The company says the new release provides the industry’s first collaborative procurement marketplace to help streamline and deliver effective procurement services to the NHS.

NHS McAfee protection may take up to 6 months to complete

Connecting for Health has said the 700,000 licences for McAfee’s SafeBoot, have been issued to NHS trusts but the process will take some time to progress "as skilled technicians are required to complete the task". The agency said it will take "at least six months" for each trust to complete the encryption and as there is no central monitoring, it is up to the strategic health authorities to check data has been encrypted.

NHS innovation hubs receive £8.5m government funding for research

NHS innovation hubs have collectively received over £8.5m Public Sector Research Establishment Funding (PSRE) to spend on NHS innovation. The money is part of a £63m grant awarded by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, which is to be used to support the initial stages of commercialising research before third-party investment is secured.

Awards

Entries open for BT e-Health Insider Awards 2008

New categories in the BT e-Health Insider Awards 2008 will reward excellent work by healthcare information and communications technology professionals in vital areas such as patient safety, security and wireless working. Details of the awards and online entry forms are at: www.ehealthawards.com.

Research Reports

EHI publishes new report focusing on web 2.0

Internet developments that brought us sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia are now set to revolutionise healthcare, according to a new research report from E-Health Insider. Titled ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective’ the report concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering our healthcare. An executive summary of the ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with UK Perspective’ report is available here.