Healthcare IT news in brief

Trust news

Gloucestershire delays TrakCare go-live

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has again delayed its go-live with InterSystems’ electronic patient record. The trust was due to deploy TrakCare on 2 May, but has not set a new go-live date. Gloucestershire is part of the SmartCare collaboration – with Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – that announced in May 2014 that it had chosen InterSystems. Yeovil still plans to deploy the EPR at the end of the month.

North Staffordshire submits final Lorenzo business case

North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust has submitted the final draft of its business case to the Health & Social Care Information Centre for CSC’s Lorenzo EPR and expects a final decision to be made shortly. The trust said it is working with clinicians to prepare for the new system and hopes to go-live in 2017. A spokesperson said:  “our ambition is to become a ‘digital by choice’ organisation with a national reputation as a leader in the use of digital technology.

Contract wins

Nuffield Health chooses MSoft eSolutions’ blood-tracking technology

Nuffield Health is introducing blood-tracking solutions from MSoft eSolutions across all 31 of its hospitals. The private health provider will introduce three of MSoft’s products; Bloodhound controls access to and from all blood fridges; Sample360 is a phlebotomy sample tracking and management solution; and PPID360 is the latest generation in systems providing positive patient identification in healthcare organisations.

Countess of Chester Hospital selects Lexmark's Healthcare Content Management

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has chosen Lexmark to provide Healthcare Content Management. HCM is modular, enterprise strategy that allows organisations to securely capture, manage, view and share valuable clinical content that is often stored away in departmental systems and therefore out of reach from clinical users of other departments who could make use of that content to improve patient treatment.

Industry news

More start-ups sought for Digital Health quarter of the Serendip Incubator

Digital health start-up businesses are being sought to join the Serendip Digital Health quarter in Birmingham. There are four sector-specific Serendip ‘quarters’; Digital Health, Intelligent Mobility, Internet of Things and an additional incubator. The quarter is on the first floor of the new iCentrum building in Birmingham and co-locates promising start-up businesses with large commercial partners. The commercial partners help to mentor qualifying early stage tech companies and may become customers or distribution channels for the start-ups.

News from Wales

Wales trials GP appointment cancellations

Wales is trialling an added feature to the GP My Health Text service that will allow patients to text back 'cancel' to an appointment reminder, and for that appointment to be automatically removed from the GP practice system. The My Health Text Messaging service allows clinicians to send health care invitations and appointment reminders to patients by SMS text messages. The trial of the cancellation feature is starting with an EMIS site. Welsh patients fail to turn up for more than one in ten GP appointments.