Healthcare IT news in brief

£10 million for tech support self-care

Research into using tech to manage chronic disease remotely has received a funding boost.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is spending £10 million on eight projects aimed at using technology to improve self-care of chronic conditions.

Many of the projects focus on using a combination of sensors, wearables and predictive analytics to treat everything from asthma to dementia to diabetes.

Most projects are collaborations between tech companies, such as Cerner and Microsoft, and NHS organisations or universities.

Council chief executive Philip Nelson said with the population ageing and health demand rising previous models of care were too costly.

“Using these new technologies provides ways of gauging a patient’s health in real-time and detecting any deterioration quickly. This will help people remain in their homes for longer, avoid congestion and delay and mean treatment can be targeted quickly and when it can be most appropriate and effective.”

Half of trust have no XP migration plans

Windows XP hasn’t been supported since 2014 but many NHS trusts are still hanging on with no firm plans to shift to a new system.

Systems supplier Citrix asked, through the Freedom of Information Act, 63 trusts about their XP use and plans to move off the old operating system.

Only 42 responded, but of those nine out of ten were still using XP, although often only on a small number of devices.

Of those that responded, 24 were “still unsure” when they would migrate off XP onto a new version on windows.

The Citrix survey covered less than a fifth of the total trusts in England and previous surveys have place the rate of XP use in the NHS far lower.

However, concerns about the prevalence XP are widespread, with Dame Fiona Caldicott calling “obsolete technology” a security threat to the NHS in her July report.

Windows XP has been the gateway for several successful cyber-attacks on NHS trusts and NHS Digital said earlier this year that it will be working more closely with trusts to help them move off old technology platforms.

Birmingham Children’s deploys new pacemaker system

Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone-live with DataLinQ to manage its use of remote medical devices. It is the first trust in the UK to deploy the product, from Dutch company Fysicon.

The system creates a single database for pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, loop recorders and other remote devices, that does not require manual entry. Earlier this year, Birmingham Children’s rolled out wireless devices for remotely monitoring patients’ vital signs.

Virtual GP access offered to insurance customers

While some digital GP services are making inroads in the public health system, private insurers are also getting on-board.

Insurer Legal and General is testing a scheme that would give employees of some of its business customers access to video or phone consultations with UK-trained and accredited GPs. The insurer has partnered with Doctor Care Anywhere to offer the service.

The service will also include as app for employees to “track their health” and manage prescriptions and specialist referrals.

A plethora of GP digital services have sprung up in recent years, seeking to disrupt the traditional mode of care delivery. Many GPs have also started experiment with offering NHS patients video consultations, with mixed results.