Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
UK-wide online system letting patients see results within hours of a test may be used by other specialities
This is an unusual example of a system built by a couple of NHS organisations in one nation – health boards in Scotland in this case – which is then adopted by units across the UK. Continue reading “Open source test results service adopted by renal patients”
Councils in north west England are drafting a bylaw for minimum drink prices, but Scotland may get there first
Scotland is increasingly developing distinctive policies on health, such as minimum unit pricing for alcohol, to deal with its particular health problems. You can read other posts and articles by me on Scotland here.
Continue reading “Scotland set to lead on minimum unit pricing for alcohol”
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”
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”
First published in Government Computing, September 2002
Orkney Island Council is the smallest full-service local authority in the UK, a unitary body that governs just 20,000 people on 17 inhabited islands.
It is also a place where they love the internet. A council survey last summer, which gathered responses from over 1,000 households, found that 44% had internet access with another 6% planning to go online by the end of 2002. The national equivalent last summer, according to Oftel, was 39%.
So it may come as a surprise that the council is planning to concentrate on video-conferencing, rather than its web-site, in providing electronic access to social services, housing and health.
Continue reading “Video ring to unite islanders: Orkney Island Council and videoconferencing”