EHI’s industry round up 28.01.2010

This month’s industry round up has news about contracts, company partnerships, the launch of a US interoperability company in the UK, and new appointments at the top of CSC.

Northern Ireland’s health service sticks with CRYPTOCard

Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland has decided to upgrade to to BlackShield ID, CRYPTOCard’s premier authentication service. The organisation originally contracted CRYPTOCard to provide two factor authentication hardware tokens to six trusts for remote access via the internet and PSTN. It subsequently extended CRYPTOShield to more organisations and to web-based applications. It says upgrading to BlackShield ID will deliver additional benefits, such as SMS and BlackBerry tokens and tokens in soft, USB and SMS formats to suit the needs of different users, including contractors.

Charity selects DCSL solution for patient data

The Scottish Huntington’s Association has selected a tailor-made management system from DCSL to provide a centralised repository for patient data and enable staff to access it securely from any of its sites. The system is expected to significantly reduce the time staff spend manually re-entering data from various locations to produce data sets.

CSC makes senior appointments

CSC has made senior appointments to its UK healthcare team. Consultant anaesthetist Paul Shannon, who still works part time at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, has become medical director. He will lead the company’s clinical team, which is involved in all stages of productive development and deployment, and work closely with healthcare decision makers. Andy Hall, who formerly worked for Fujitsu Services, healthcare start-ups and Xerox, has been appointed sales director. He will consolidate and expand CSC’s local service provider role, while leading on the growth of new business in the UK healthcare sector.

Mirth launches in UK

Mirth Corporation, a US open source interoperability company, has announced the launch of a UK-based unit. It says the move is a response to proposed changes to the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which will see a new focus on connecting existing systems. Jon Teichrow, president of Mirth Corporation, said: “We’re looking forward to spending more time with our growing base of UK customers to understand their needs and to collaborate on solving their local integration problems.”

Medical image and document sharing companies form strategic partnership

Cimar (UK) and Cypher Information Technology have signed an agreement for the strategic integration of their respective products. The agreement will enable the two companies to provide a fully interoperable service for image and document sharing. Cypher IT said its bbRad product already provided the workflow for bulk data transfers between hospitals, but that by integrating with Cimar it would be able to provide web sharing with sites outside of the bbRad/Cimar network, including non-acute sites. www.cimarmedical.co.uk

SRC and ScribeTECH collaborate

SRC and ScribeTECH are collaborating to connect their digital dictation and offshore medical transcription services. The two companies are offering a dictation and transcription solution that allows clinicians to dictate on a range of digital devices, using WinScribe digital dictation, and then automatically send dictations to internal typing teams or to ScribeTECH, using a common user interface.

Vodafone gets quality mark for remote working

Vodafone has announced that it has become the first UK mobile operator to be awarded the government quality mark for its remote worker security solution. The company received the CESG claims test mark, which verifies its security solutions for data confidentiality, integrity and availability. The certificate means that UK public sector organisations including the NHS can use Vodafone Secure Remote Access V2.8.

The Information Standard certifies first members

Thirty six organisations have been announced as the first certified members of The Information Standard and can now use its quality mark on their health and social care information materials. The organisations range from publishing groups to patient organisations and NHS trusts. More than 50,000 commercial, public sector and voluntary organisations may be eligible to join. A full list of the first members is on The Information Standard website.