Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
The crisis-hit £12.7bn NHS IT programme is under attack from the Tories, but it is working well in Scotland
The much-criticised National Programme for IT only covered England, as each of the four UK nations runs its own healthcare. This article looks at Scotland’s relative success in building its emergency care summary system, covering virtually the entire population. Continue reading “Online health records can save lives”
A technique developed by the car industry could help staff, patients and reduce costs, says SA Mathieson
Since this event, the concept of lean healthcare does not appear to have spread widely across the NHS, unfortunately. In August 2012, the New Yorker reported on a few US hospital chains thinking of the same ideas.
Continue reading “NHS should embrace lean times”
First published in Health Service Journal, 8 September 2005
Across continental Europe, patients visiting a doctor take a plastic card to prove their entitlement to healthcare. Increasingly, these cards hold a microchip allowing payments for treatment to be processed and if necessary refunded more quickly than in the past.
But smartcards can also be used as electronic keys to patient records, boosting security and demonstrating consent.
Continue reading “Smart move: use of health smartcards in EU countries”
Article on data analysis in the NHS, first published in Health Service Journal, 5 July 2005
Two years ago, Sheila Leatherman, research professor at University of North Carolina’s school of public health, and Kim Sutherland, a senior research associate at University of Cambridge’s Judge institute of management, wrote ‘The Quest for Quality in the NHS’ for the Nuffield Trust, comparing England’s NHS to other developed countries.
The authors noted the lack of a ‘shared robust information base that provides a common understanding of the NHS’s strengths and weaknesses’. Now, Prof Leatherman and Dr Sutherland have attempted to show that such an information base, using independent and routinely-reported data, can and should be compiled – by doing it themselves, through compiling more than 100 charts from numerous sources into a single chartbook of NHS quality.
Continue reading “Charting a new course: data analysis of the NHS across the UK”
A version of this article appeared in Health Service Journal, 9 December 2004
Of the three main applications within the English NHS’s National Programme for IT, electronic transmission of prescriptions (ETP) looks the least controversial. The Care Records Service’s online database of patient records causes concerns over privacy and security, while attitudes towards the Choose and Book electronic booking system are coloured by views on patient choice.
By contrast, ETP does not create new flows of data: prescription details already move from GPs to pharmacists, then on to the Prescription Pricing Authority (PPA), allowing it to reimburse pharmacies for the difference between real cost and charged price. Under ETP, this data will move electronically rather than on paper, hopefully cutting errors, saving money and time.
Continue reading “Rewriting the script: the NHS and electronic transmission of prescriptions”
