Healthcare IT news round-up

This month’s industry round-up includes two UK based students entering a global medical hackathon, a remedy to Brexit causing health data fears and a Liverpool hospital showing off its technology in the Middle East. 

Hackathon in Helsinki 

Selected medical students from around the globe are taking part in a hackathon to create solutions for issues in teaching medicine.

Run by global information analytics company, Elsevier, the hackathon will take place in Helsinki on 26-30 August, and gives 20 finalists 48 hours to design a solution to help issues in medical education. The first round saw 1,588 applications from 88 countries apply, and the final cohort includes two UK based finalists. Lee Yen Yi, third year medical student at the University of Edinburgh, said she was “very excited and grateful to be given this opportunity to participate in the hackathon”.

https://youtu.be/EvFTaByAap8

Her project is to explore how gamification can help teach medical students clinical reasoning in a risk free environment. Mao Fong Lim, a medical student at Kings College London, has proposed an idea of how other disciplines can be brought into medical education to create caring, compassionate and creative doctors. “This is an amazing opportunity to meet other like-minded medical students – brimming with creativity and the desire to make things better through technology”, he said. “As healthcare becomes increasingly digital, health education needs to keep up in that respect, whilst also focusing on building character, compassion and values in future doctors.” For ‘Elsevier Hacks’ the students will have to work in teams to create the new technology. The hackathon is taking place as part of the American College of Emergency Physicians annual conference.

https://youtu.be/HOO2z-R3GVk

Charity calls for health data protection post Brexit 

Future Care Capital, a health and care charity that promotes education and standards across the sector, is calling on ministers to develop a dedicated ‘data privacy shield’ for health and care data. The charity wants this to apply to any future trade negotiations outside Europe, in order to safeguard the public whilst improving the UK’s competitiveness.

Future Care Capital’s concerns lie with post-Brexit, Britain negotiating separate data sharing agreements with 63 non-European Economic Area (EEA) states, including the US, which currently benefit from data or trading arrangements with the EU. The charity suggests the privacy shield could be provided through the Data Protection Bill, due to be introduced in autumn, whilst incorporating the EU the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into UK law. Dean James CBE, chief executive of Future Care Capital, said: “With a privacy mechanism in place, underpinned by world class data ethics, the UK can secure the public trust needed to lead advancements in treatments and technologies”. “We must strike the right balance between privacy and the opportunity that data represents in this digital era once we have left the European Union. We cannot afford to fall behind.”

Liverpool Women’s head to Abu Dhabi 

Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust will be taking its self-service technology to the first GCC Patient Experience Summit in Abu Dhabi in September.

Jonathan Lofthouse, the trust’s director of turnaround and transformation, will tell delegates about Liverpool and Intouch with Health’s self-service check-in kiosks and electronic outcome forms. “The summit is a great platform for the trust to demonstrate to senior healthcare professionals from across the Middle East how our investment in digital innovation has transformed the patient experience at Liverpool Women’s Hospital”, Lofthouse said.