Posts Tagged ‘IT’

Widgets hold the key to future healthiness

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 3rd January 2010 2:00 pm

Along with nearly 27 million other Britons, I have been making my New Year resolutions.

Determined not to be amongst the 40% who fail within the first month, I decided to make them along NHS guidelines. They even have tools for your desktop or smartphone, and you’ve got to love a widget…

I am going to share them with you, because then I will have to stick with them, won’t I?

Firstly, I am going to give up smoking. Apparently I’ll look less wrinkly, smell nice, save loads of money, feel better, and live longer. I started the widget, and entered the number of ciggies I have a day. Bingo, I’m now a non-smoker, I’ve managed 47 minutes so far! This resolution malarky is going to be a piece of wee wee, particularly as I don’t even smoke.

Next I am going to lose weight (important now that I’ve given up a non-existent nicotine habit) and get fitter. The keep active tool suggests I should become a volunteer, I wonder how that works? I need to do 30 minutes of activity every day - knitting - that covers that. 

To lose weight after Christmas (although spending the festive season in Marrakech has left me in slight negative equity anyway), I will walk 10,000 steps a day. With my pedometer on me at all times, I shall stride 6.6km on a daily basis. The dogs will be delighted, and after three months, I’ll be just south of Selkirk.

I will also eat healthily. The supermarket healthy swap widget has removed the freshly squeezed orange from my trolley, and replaced it with a carton of Tropicana. Eh? The family will eat healthily too. New guidelines suggest that children should only be allowed solids if they can sit up with good head control, and accurately reach for a banana. So I’m going to have to go back to breastfeeding my son, after he’s had a few pints of cider.

Although that nice Professor Donaldson won’t let him have any until the end of February, when he gets to fifteen.

Talking of alcohol, I will stick to the daily recommended level of two to three units for women, and, no, I won’t save them all up for Saturday night because I know that is BAD for you. 

I will drink my 123 mls of anti-oxidant Merlot all in one go. I will also take careful note of my mental state, the widget says I am unhealthily stressed at work, and that I am depressed. If anything is making me depressed it’s these NHS tools.

Finally, I promise not to upstage Bob Bury (our new blogger). That’s one resolution I will stick to.

London medical records go online this week

BBC Health - 16th November 2009 8:53 am

About 50 million patient records are to go online in London after long delays to the capital’s NHS IT upgrade.

The £12bn government programme has been beset with problems and is four years behind schedule.

The records, which contain details of patient medications and allergies, will go live on Thursday following pilot studies across England.

It is hoped the new system will mean patient information is more easily shared.

The summary care record is designed to securely hold details of medications, allergies, adverse reactions and other key health information.

It is based on a patient’s GP record but is designed so any doctor treating a patient can add to it.

It is hoped information will be more easily shared, for instance between hospitals and surgeries where a patient is treated.

Read more at BBC Health.

E-record glitches delay referrals at London trust

The Times - 3rd October 2009 2:39 pm

Thousands of people are being forced to wait six months or more for hospital treatment or tests because of problems with the £12.7 billion project to upgrade NHS computer systems. 

More than 14,000 patients at a major London trust have already had to endure waiting times that exceed government guidelines. The trust was one of the first to install electronic patient records. Similar systems are being rolled out across England.

The Department of Health says that nobody should wait more than 18 weeks to receive hospital treatment from the time they are referred by a GP, unless they choose to wait longer.

But Barts and the London NHS Trust, which introduced the system in April last year, has a backlog of 22,000 electronic patient records on its 18-week waiting list.

Many of these are thought to be duplicates but at least 14,000 are considered by trust staff to be the records of individual patients who may have been waiting longer than 18 weeks.

The figures were reported to the trust’s board last month as part of a continuing investigation. Staff and doctors at the trust lost track of thousands of patients when the computerised records were introduced. The backlog means that many patients could end up waiting more than 26 weeks or even a year.

Read more at The Times.