Some interesting straws in the wind this week on the information sharing front. One of England’s longest-running record sharing projects – and its only national one – expanded significantly when community pharmacists were given access to the NHS Summary Care Record.

Then the third and final lot of the new GP Systems of Choice framework was announced to support local integrated working and information sharing initiatives; using a wide variety of approaches, to judge from the companies on it.

Then Emis announced that it had completed the first phase of a project in Gibraltar to create a single electronic patient record for the island’s health services, based around a single registry feeding different Emis systems.

All of these announcements represent progress in their own areas. The question, surely is whether there’s a plan or framework in the offing that will pull them together at a regional or national level, to make the kind of impact on efficiency and quality that the NHS needs to make.

Gibraltar live with first phase of EHR

The Gibraltar Health Authority has gone live with the first phase of an ambitious programme to create a single electronic patient record for its acute, primary and pharmacy services, using Emis systems.

Southampton takes forward genomics

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust will use a supercomputer to interpret the genomic data of cancer patients to make sure they receive the most appropriate care.

Pharmacists given access to SCR

Community pharmacists are to be given access to the NHS Summary Care Record, the Health and Social Care Information Centre has announced.

Wearables info to feed records - Kelsey

Members of the public will be able to add data from wearable devices to their electronic patient record by 2018, according to Tim Kelsey, national director for patients and information at NHS England.

Four step app 'endorsement' process

Healthcare apps will go through a four-stage recommendation process as part of NHS England’s plans to create an endorsement model for these tools.

Seventeen suppliers sign GPSoC Lot 3

Seventeen suppliers have signed up to provide cross care-setting interoperability services as part of Lot 3 of the GP Systems of Choice contract.

Open source 'super CIC' created

NHS England has set up a ‘super CIC’ to act as a centre of excellence and attract funding for open source projects within health and social care.

Capita wins £400m PCS contract

Capita is the preferred bidder for a £400 million contract to deliver administrative support services for primary care services in England.

“In order to make this work we need some really cool added-value tools and services. At the moment, it’s a pretty limited choice.”

NHS England director of patients and information Tim Kelsey calls on small businesses and third sector organisations to come up with innovative ideas for helping patients to make sense of and make more use of the medical records access they are being promised for 2018.

“No, this is an entirely new departure. And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.”

Long term readers of the diary will know that it has great affection for the ‘behind the headlines’ feature of NHS Choices, which does battle with the wilder ideas of the nation’s health correspondents, and tries to separate truth from fantasy for their readers. But regular writer “Bazian” sounded pretty fed up with coverage of the ‘news’ that a single woman in Australia might have suffered some temporary ankle weakness after squatting for a long time in tight jeans.

“[The media] have taken the opportunity to indulge in some shameless clickbaiting by showing photos of various skinny-jean-wearing celebs, such as Russell Brand, Kate Moss, Harry Styles and the Duchess of Cambridge” he (or she) complained. “Call us cynical, but we doubt a case involving anoraks or thermal underwear would generate the same level of coverage.”