Please click on the logos
above of the UKeHA's
Chairman's Circle Members

Welcome to New Members
The UK eHealth Association is delighted to welcome three new members to the Chairman’s Circle including Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company; the General Healthcare Group, a leading provider of independent health care services throughout the UK; and the National Patient Safety Agency, a Special Health Authority created to co-ordinate the efforts of all those involved in healthcare, and more importantly to learn from, patient safety incidents occurring in the NHS.  For information on how to join the UkeHA, please contact Mike McCurry at treasurer@ukeha.org.uk or visit www.ukeha.co.uk 

BlueSpier win Best New Exporter 2005
Bluespier International, a leading international name in clinical information systems with clients in four countries ranging from private users through to large hospitals, has won the Chamber of Commerce Award for Best New Exporter 2005. The award is based on the export success Bluespier has had in Australia, Ireland and South Africa, with customers supported globally from Worcestershire using an internet based data centre. The award was presented to Bluespier at an awards ceremony held in Worcester Cathedral attended by over 300 local business people and dignitaries. For further information, visit Bluespier at www.bluespier.com

Microsoft’s NHS Website Goes Live
Microsoft has recently launched the revamped Government website with an area devoted to the NHS.  Microsoft is currently still building the content which will provide an excellent resource to understand what Microsoft is doing in the healthcare arena together with details of forthcoming events, case studies and licensing material.  Frequently Asked Questions for the new Enterprise Agreement have already been posted to the site.  For further information, visit the NHS Health Informatics Community at http://www.informatics.
nhs.uk/ or Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.
com/uk/government/
health/default.mspx

Events
30 September 2005
Southern Institute for Health Informatics 7th Annual Conference, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK. 
For further information, please visit http://www.disco.port.
ac.uk/hcc/sihi/sihi2005/
index.htm

28 - 29 November 2005
Telemed & eHealth '05: Meeting healthcare challenges, Royal Society of Medicine, London, UK. For further information, please visit the Royal Society of Medicine at http://www.rsm.ac.uk/
academ/fmttelem.htm

20 - 22 March 2006
HC2006 : Health Informatics Making the Difference, Harrogate, UK.  For further information, visit Health Informatics at http://www.health-informatics.org/

All Change at NPfIT
The National Programme for IT has become an agency of the Department of Health and has been renamed NHS Connecting for Health. Richard Granger will become Chief Executive and Senior Responsible Officer for Programme and Systems Delivery. He remains Director General for IT. John Bacon, Department of Health Group Director for Delivery, becomes overarching Senior Responsible Officer for all work streams for the programme. Both Richard Granger and John Bacon continue to report to the NHS Chief Executive, Sir Nigel Crisp. For further information, visit the Department of Health for IT at http://www.dh.
gov.uk/
PublicationsAnd
Statistics/
PressReleases/
PressReleases
Notices/fs/en?CONTENT
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wHRoXk

Safety First
Dr Maureen Baker, head of postgraduate professional training and special clinical adviser at the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), has been seconded to the NHS Connecting for Health for two days a week.  She will work to ensure that all the IT programme’s products and services support clinicians in providing safe care.  A former GP, Dr Baker will head up the safety management approach, overseeing hazard assessments and safety justifications and producing a safety closure report on all programme’s products.  NPSA joint chief executive, Susan Williams said:  “We are delighted to support Dr Baker’s secondment.  She will take with her the backing of the NPSA in integrating patient safety into the National Programme for IT.”  Dr Baker joined the National Patient Safety Agency in November 2002.  She previously practiced as a GP in Lincoln and has been an associate adviser and lecturer in general practice at Nottingham University.  She has also been honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners since 1999.  For further information, visit NHS Connecting for Health www.npfit.nhs.uk/
news/220205/view

Patients Check Up on Medical Records
Researchers from the Health Organisations Research Centre at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) have explored the issues relating to patients being enabled to check the accuracy of their electronic medical records and request alterations over the Internet.  The results of the study, published in a document entitled ‘Proof of concept of patients remotely accepting or rejecting the accuracy of their electronic health records’, gives valuable insight into the mechanics of the process and the problems that can arise at the different stages.  The 18-month trial, led by Dr Claire Harris and Dr Ruth Boaden from the Manchester School of Management, was commissioned and funded by Tameside and Glossop PCT and involved two GP practices and 100 volunteer patients from Hadfield Medical Centre and Thornley House Medical Centre.  For the full text of the report visit the public participation section of the PCT website at www.tamesideand
glossop.nhs.uk orthe Health Informatics Community at http://www.informatics
.nhs.uk/

Events

25 - 27 September 2005
Institute of Health Record & Information Management 2005 Annual Conference: Fit for the Future, Marriott Hotel, Peterborough.  For further information, visit the Health Informatics Community at http://www.informatics.
nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=
1293&d=11&h=0&f=0

26 – 27 September 2005
eCare Conference 2005: Better Outcomes – Better Information Sharing, Inchyra Grange Hotel, Stirlingshire, Scotland. For further information visit www.ecare-scotland.
gov.uk/conference

26 - 28 September 2005
Clinical Information Systems and Electronic Records 2005, London West Convention Centre.  For further information, contact Clare Gallagher, Programme Director for Healthcare Events, on 0208 541 1399.

As Microsoft’s senior executive, chief strategist and spokesperson for Healthcare initiatives worldwide, Neil Jordan is charged with defining and articulating the Microsoft vision for the future of Public Sector Healthcare, and how Microsoft products, technologies and partner solutions will make it a reality. Here, Neil talks to ehealthcheck about his role at Microsoft and his vision for the future of ehealth.

What does your role entail as Microsoft’s senior executive, chief strategist and spokesperson for healthcare initiatives worldwide?
To date, Microsoft has had much success in implementing healthcare systems in many different countries. As a consequence, my role has been recently created to further expand this and have impact on the future of public sector healthcare in developing and developed countries, as well as in the area of Defence & Humanitarian Healthcare space.

I have three key responsibilities:
1) To help build solutions with Microsoft Partners and technologies to answer customer needs in those three market segments I mentioned.
2) To help customers, analysts and our partners understand Microsoft’s objectives in the healthcare sector.
3) To listen to customers & partners and then provide consultation to Microsoft’s product groups relating to healthcare needs that can be answered by our core product platform today and in the future.

What are the core focus areas for Microsoft’s healthcare initiatives worldwide?
The core focus area for Microsoft is to provide effective technology to those who provide healthcare – whether it’s clinicians, community care and service workers, developed or emerging nations or indeed military medical systems.

Having previously worked as Head of Healthcare in the UK for Microsoft for five years, how does the UK’s National Programme for IT compare to similar healthcare programmes worldwide?
Whilst the UK’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is on a greater scale and complexity level than programmes in other countries, I think that it is still very similar to other healthcare programmes worldwide as the issue of patient safety, and ways in which relevant information can be made as portable yet secure as possible, is at the top of the agenda for all.

However, it is interesting to see how these issues are approached in different ways by various countries, all of whom are coming from a different starting point - for example, in the UK, whilst electronic patient records are used in over 95 per cent of GP practices, their use in hospitals is much less widespread. In many other countries that position is reversed. Similarly the funding for systems and the derived architecture to solve the same problems are as diverse as the countries that put them in place.

Healthcare delivery is becoming a global matter crossing borders and pushing down the present barriers that limit equitable quality. What can be done to accelerate the provision of equitable healthcare for citizens worldwide? Where can Microsoft assist in this and how will it approach the digital divide?
In order to accelerate the provision of equitable healthcare for citizens worldwide, we need to start tracking outcomes better and fund based on longer term views on outcomes. Countries need to think about the science of how to budget or pay for the effective portions of healthcare systems in order to have a positive impact.

Over time we will begin to see more differences and advances in developing nations, especially once we start to open up the availability of well-governed clinical data and provide IT supported decision systems for clinicians – particularly for those in developing countries who haven’t necessarily had so much training. It is important to provide support systems that can allow para-professional medical staff to give treatment effectively, and also to make information and clinical awareness more transferable.

To support this, we are developing a range of real time collaborative technologies that will make it easier to have access to and share medical information wherever you are in the world. To name but a few, products include Sharepoint; Groove and Office.

Why is it important to develop common interfaces for the exchange of clinical information?
There are three reasons - firstly, we need to reduce the likelihood of error due to systems running differently. The second is that systems need to work in a similar way so that as clinicians become more mobile in their jobs, they can use any equipment without training or compromising patient safety. Finally, we need to ensure that clinicians feel compelled to use technology and really see the benefits – for example increasing the amount of patient time they have available.

Hand held devices and smart phones are being used more and more frequently to present health information – how do you see this technology being used in the future?
There’s no doubt that the medical environment is the most mobile in the world, and it’s set to grow as technology evolves. PDAs and SmartPhones are already being used effectively to present health information to patients and clinicians, and I think this trend will continue. However, different disciplines and situations need different form factors. These are getting more varied rather than less so and the new A5 Tablet PC from Motion is a great example of a device that really fits the needs of ambulatory care deliverers.

With the right funding, hand held devices and smart phones will play a big part in the future – for example, we’ll start to see patients being able to take images on their mobiles or use PDAs to record things such as their blood glucose levels and then send the information through to their doctors to track and diagnose accordingly.

How should we address the training of undergraduates in the field and prepare them to emerge into an ehealth world, and what responsibility does Microsoft feel that they have to meet this requirement?
It’s vital that the next generation of clinicians feel comfortable with the possibilities of technology, and many of those going into medical training in developed nations today have lived the majority of their lives in a digital, connected world, so their expectations of how systems should look, feel and work are high. Core research work that Microsoft undertakes will inform this for application providers and new technologies such as the data manipulation and visualisation tools in the next version of Windows, called Windows Vista, will see much of this come to life.

I think that it is also important that we make equipment more easily available to developing nations, which is why Microsoft has set up its global Partners in Learning initiative to work with Governments, Ministries of Education, and other key stakeholders to offer a spectrum of education resources. What’s more, we have initiated the Digital Pipeline, which aims to build IT capacity in developing countries that have not traditionally had the resources required to take advantage of innovative technologies. The programme helps bridge the digital divide by taking advantage of the increasing number of PCs that are discarded each year by businesses and other organisations in developed countries.

What is your vision for the ehealth industry after 2020?
It is interesting to note that some of the greatest shifts in ehealth in 2020 may well be seen in the developing nations where the legacy is that much less. There are parallels here with the telecoms industry where whole communications systems are built in a way that is more responsive to the citizen’s needs and not held back by previous iterations. I think there are great leaps to be made in this area, but overall my vision for the ehealth industry after 2020 is that technology should continue to take strides forward in helping to provide not only increases in patient safety, but also a reduction in time spent by clinicians on mundane tasks. Let doctors be doctors!