Healthcare IT news in brief

Royal Cornwall goes live with Nervecentre in maternity
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust is the first trust in the country to deploy Nervecentre in its maternity and neo-natal units.

The electronic observation software was specifically adapted to the complex environment of the maternity and neo-natal service for the installation. Trust consultant obstetrician Dr Aylur Rajasri said it was providing enhanced care for new-borns and mothers.

“[It’s] an innovative solution to improve patient safety by allowing the recording, assessment and prompt escalation of concerns to senior colleagues, all of which significantly benefits mothers and babies in our care.”

Nervecentre calculates early warning scores from a patient’s vital signs and sends an alert to clinicians that urgent care could be required.

Frazer Underwood, the trust’s associate nursing director, said it has replaced a largely paper-based system, on which midwives periodically recorded patient’s vital signs on paper charts.

“This system helps us progress our ambition to become a paper-light organisation and significantly helps us improve the care and safety for our patients.”

Royal Cornwall has now deployed Nervecentre across 750 beds in 20 wards at three separate sites. Maternity and neo-natal were the last wards to go-live with the system.

Joint healthcare wi-fi rolled out across Dorset
Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset CCG now have a shared wi-fi service available to GPs practices and community staff. The CCG picked Healthcare Computing to provide the service.

Wi-fi is now available at 130 sites across Dorset and can be used by more than 5,000 clinical and nursing staff who often have to work remotely while traveling to visit patients. The service works for all mobile devices, including tablets and phones.

£15 million for new health and life sciences products
Innovate UK has made £15 million available in grants to help develop products in health and life sciences that increase competitiveness, including clinical technologies. The fund is aimed at helping SMEs that might face capital constraints to bring innovative products to market.

Grants range from £25,000 to £2 million, and can help fund anything from concept development to commercial production. Categories include precision medicine, advanced therapies, pre-clinical technologies and bio-sciences. Companies or consortiums must apply by 16 November.

Intelerad joins BIR
A Canadian PACS supplier has joined the British Institute of Radiology. Intelerad Medical Systems products include enterprise workflow, archiving, and imaging interoperability. The company already has some UK customers, such as University Hospital of North Midlands NHS Trust, but is seeking to expand more aggressively into the UK.

Radiology Reporting online gains new IT director
Teleradiology service Radiology Reporting Online has appointed Adam Atkins as its new IT director. Adams has previously worked at software and service supplies including Alliance Medical and 4Ways Healthcare.

The company, which is half-owned by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, provides a secondary remote radiology service for both NHS trusts and private hospitals. It also has a footprint in Australia.