More than 1,100 exhibition visitors and conference delegates made their way to eHealth Insider Live 2010 at the NEC in Birmingham, to see more than 100 exhibitors and a packed line-up of speakers...

The Department of Health published a three-month consultation on a new information strategy for the NHS. 'Liberating the NHS: an information revolution' may be light on detail.

More than 450 potential winners, sponsors and guests saw comedian Marcus Brigstocke hand out awards in nine categories, after which an overall winner and the IT champion of the year were announced.

On July 8 2010, E-Health Insider convened a round table debate on clinical pathology, sponsored by iSOFT. The event gathered together some of the leading players in pathology in the UK, with industry, the NHS and academia represented.

In March 2010, E-Health Insider hosted a roundtable debate sponsored by iSOFT on “technology for the evolving world of consumer health”.

1,300 people, 80 exhibitors, four conference streams, the sheep key-rings, the chocolate fountain. Last week, E-Health Insider Live ’09 took place at The ICC in Birmingham.

E-Health Insider’s third annual awards ceremony took place last Tuesday. Some 350 guests gathered at The Hilton on Park Lane for the E-Health Insider Awards 2009 in association with BT, to see broadcaster Emily Maitlis present a record eleven awards.

South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust has invested in a Microsoft network infrastructure to make information readily available wherever and whenever its employees need it.

This special E-Health Insider report details the expert discussion, insights and recommendations made by independent panel on this vital topic.

The North West has made voice recognition a QIPP priority – and is seeing impressive results. Daloni Carlisle reports.

The interoperability toolkit is delivering its first tools. It’s not yet clear what they will be used for, says Daloni Carlisle.

E-prescribing should increase safety and efficiency. Both are starting to appeal to trusts. Daloni Carlisle reports.

The post-white paper NHS is going to need better information at all levels. But who will provide it? And are IT systems available that are up to the job? Fiona Barr reports.

Some big name viruses and worms – like Conficker – continue to make headlines. But network security is more than a matter of bolting on some anti-virus protection. Daloni Carlisle reports.

The value of asset tracking has been recognised by the NHS. But in hard financial times, there is a debate about the best technology for doing it.

Despite the new age of austerity, the PACS/RIS community is looking to future investment, Linda Davidson finds on the eve of UKRC.

April’s target for hospitals to deliver discharge summaries to GPs within 24 hours has spurred NHS Connecting for Health, suppliers and NHS trusts into action.

A new framework contract is opening up the digital dictation market. Daloni Carlisle reports.

Systems integration is back on the agenda with the Department of Health’s order to “connect all.” Daloni Carlisle reports.

The potential penalties for breaching the Data Protection Act just got tougher. Yet NHS organisations are still breaching it. Daloni Carlisle reports.

The Pre-Budget Report put some numbers on the scale of efficiency savings that the NHS will be expected to find over the next few years. Another reason for the NHS to get a grip on its data, says Daloni Carlisle.

Digital dictation and voice recognition are helping trusts to save money and prepare for upcoming targets. Daloni Carlisle reports.

Today’s integration projects are all about delivering higher quality, more efficient services – and they have to justify themselves in financial terms. Daloni Carlisle reports.

It’s almost a decade since the Audit Commission called for e-prescribing in secondary care. Progress has been slow, but that may be about to change.

World Class Commissioning is a developing discipline with information at its heart. Daloni Carlisle reports.

Individual hospitals have PACS in place: but whatever happened to image sharing?

Data breaches continue to hit the headlines, even though there is plenty of guidance and more than a few products on the market to help stop them.

From digitisation to bar coding and now RFID tracking, there are many ways to get a grip on records in the NHS.

The cassette is becoming a thing of the past as hospitals and primary care organisations install digital dictation systems. Daloni Carlisle reports.

The race is on to get patient level costing into the NHS, and systems integration projects are being spurred on as a result.

Virtualisation is a hot topic among NHS IT managers and is being promoted by NHS Connecting for Health, the agency in charge of NHS IT.

As the credit crunch crunches, NHS organisations and health communities will need better Business Intelligence. Daloni Carlisle looks at the tools on offer and what use trusts are making of them.

The Mytob worm attack on the IT network used by three London hospital trusts knocked stories about NHS data breaches and missing mobile devices out of the headlines.

As the future of the National Programme for IT in the NHS comes under scrutiny once again, trusts are turning their attention to systems integration projects to deliver on immediate business and clinical priorities. Lyn Whitfield reports.

We are now getting to the stage where data is clean enough and data management tools intuitive enough for NHS trusts to start getting real clinical engagement.

In sci-fi land, the commander of the spaceship speaks to his computer – and the computer speaks back. Recent developments in voice recognition and wireless technology make this an increasingly reachable scenario within a hospital.

In this special report, we look at PACS and RIS interoperability and explain why the acronym ‘CHIMERA’ is one to watch.

Not so long ago, document management was all about scanning documents and getting them onto a desktop. These days it’s a much more sophisticated business – and developing all the time.

In the world of NHS three letter acronyms, CPD is one that affects nearly everyone. It stands for continuing professional development and it is as relevant to IT professionals as it is to doctors and nurses.

This special report showcases some of the highlights of the conference and exhibition.

In this Special Report we bring together case studies from around the country showing how healthcare organisations are tackling systems integration challenges.

In his New Year message on the NHS, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made it clear that greater provision of information for patients will form an essential part of the NHS reform programme.

By December 2008 all non-urgent NHS patients should start their hospital treatment within 18 weeks of their GP referring them to hospital. It’s a major challenge for the NHS – with IT at the heart of providing the solutions. Daloni Carlisle reports.

This feature looks back at E-Health Insider’s Healthcare IT Careers Forum 2007, detailing a selection of the seminars held at the event and making PowerPoint slides available for downloading.

This feature will examine how IT professionals and suppliers are rising to the challenge of authentication and access management.

NHS trusts have large numbers of computer systems, and they all need to be able to talk to each other. E-Health Insider has consulted the experts for their advice on staying ahead in systems integration.

Anyone who has ever moved house will have had that awful moment of trying to figure out how on earth to get that wardrobe out of the box room and wondering what it will look like in the new bedroom.

There is something wonderfully space-age about speech recognition. Long before most people had ever seen a computer, they had seen the space explorers of 1960s TV talking to one.

As the old ways of capturing and storing medical images are replaced by a new-generation of modalities and picture archive and communications systems (PACS), so the equipment for viewing images is undergoing equally profound change.

In this special report, we look at how PACS and RIS deployments are going across the UK and at the challenges facing suppliers of how data captured by these systems should be stored.

Digital dictation and speech recognition can be valuable tools for improving document management. Linda Davidson visits a trust that is making great strides with these technologies.

The NHS is implementing new computer systems at an unprecedented rate. Some support is available from system suppliers but the NHS must ensure that the systems are fully supported on an on-going basis.

More consumer-driven wireless developments are on the horizon as mobile technology enjoys wider adoption in healthcare.

In a complex environment like healthcare, systems integration is bound to be high on the information technology agenda.

In this special report on laboratory systems, experts explain how services are evolving with consolidated systems run over managed networks.

GPs were never ones to be left out of technological innovations and the current fashion for LCD television screens is no exception.

The National Programme for IT set out to replace many systems with large-scale common solutions. But the drive in that direction appears to be changing. E-Health Insider sounds out experts in industry on the direction systems integration is heading.

Like all disruptive technologies, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) solve some problems with new ways of working, but also bring fresh challenges in their wake. Information overload is one issue occupying some experienced PACS users.

A look into the latest technology and trends in this growing sector in healthcare.

The NHS is embarking on its biggest data migration exercise ever, moving data from systems that have been in use for decade. How are Trusts likely to cope with this challenge and what will thay face?

This Special Report on Education and Training reports on moves to introduce a more organised approach to training for health informatics staff also includes news from training organisations offering a huge variety of educational opportunities.

E-Health Insider looks at security issues in both acute and primary care in the NHS.

E-Health Insider looks at new and exisiting trends in mobile technology in healthcare; how much mobile technology is being used in the NHS today, and how large a role will it play in the future?

TPA: the future of surgery systems

'Liberating the NHS: an information revolution' may be light on detail, but the UK's healthcare community is already showing how many of the document's aspirations can be achieved.

Medication errors are patient safety incidents involving medicines in which there has been an error in the process of prescribing, dispensing, preparing, administering, monitoring, or providing medicine advice, regardless of whether any harm occurred.

As the NHS faces up to the challenge of improving services in a tight fiscal climate, the way community services are structured and supported will be critical.

The new coalition government has made it clear that public spending must be cut and that a shake-up of the NHS is imminent. NHS managers will be understandably concerned about where savings can be made.

As the pre-election temperature rises, delivering more NHS services more efficiently in primary care is emerging as a common theme.

Integration: the benefits of strategic thinking

Integration: the nuts and bolts of ‘connect don’t replace’

In order to make savings while delivering on Lord Darzi’s vision of a high quality, personalised NHS, trusts are being encouraged to pursue the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) agenda.

Programmes such as NHS Connecting for Health may have laid the foundations for changing the way that healthcare works, but its political future is uncertain and new demands must be met.

Healthcare IT systems should improve access to patient information; but if staff have to spend too much time and effort logging-in and finding the details they need, it will remain practically inaccessible.

BlackBerry solutions mean that healthcare professionals can stay securely connected to colleagues and operational data wherever their work takes them.

NHS chief executive David Nicholson has warned that lower funding increases combined with rising demand could leave the NHS facing a £20billion budget deficit over five years.

Healthcare interoperability matters because information cannot follow individuals around increasingly complex health and social care systems unless IT systems can communicate with each other.

"There is an increasingly common theme in healthcare across the world, the need to connect applications, people, and information to deliver patient care beyond traditional organisational boundaries," says InterSystems director of healthcare Phil Birchall.

Intel Health Guide; a personal health system that combines an in-home patient device with an online interface that allows medical staff to monitor their vital signs and communicate with them.

Technology delivers safer blood transfusions.

BlackBerry solutions mean that healthcare professionals can stay securely connected to colleagues and operational data wherever their work takes them.

The traditional doctor-patient relationship is changing as more and more patients use IT to take control of their own healthcare. This EMIS sponsored feature looks at some of the innovative projects that are moving the boundaries.

The launch of NHS Direct in 1997 marked the start of a revolution in the way that the NHS communicates with its users.

The communications landscape in healthcare is changing. Traditional, copper-based and circuit-switched architectures are struggling to keep up with the demands being placed on them.

Over the past one to two years, single sign-on has emerged as an effective way for hospitals to eliminate the challenges associated with multiple passwords, while improving clinician adoption of healthcare IT systems and overall patient and data security.

As Sean Riddell, EMIS managing director, argues in his article in this sponsored feature, information sharing is becoming ever more important as health communities seek to roll out Lord Darzi's agenda of delivering care closer to home.

Patient Information Aggregation: A Strategic Approach to Information Management for Healthcare

Recent reports have stressed the need for good information systems in the NHS. InterSystems can deliver a range of proven solutions to meet the immediate needs of NHS organisations and help them prepare for the challenges ahead.

Over the past five years, the number of patients and citizens registered in systems supplied by healthcare IT specialists, Graphnet, has doubled from nine million to 18 million.

Software Asset Management is rising up the agenda for NHS trusts and the health service as a whole.

This feature, sponsored by EMIS, takes the debate a step further by arguing that interoperability is also vital to providing the very best patient care.

This feature explores answers to all these common scenarios using Evidian’s E-SSO solution which extends the use of Active Directory to deploy single sign-on integrated with the Connecting for Health Smartcard.

N3 is essential to the modern NHS. As the largest Virtual Private Network in Europe it is a project of a scale and complexity that has never been attempted before. N3 is delivered by the N3 Service Provider (N3SP), which is managed by BT.

This feature, sponsored by Imprivata, looks at ways in which NHS trusts around the country are approaching these challenges using single sign-on technology.

Philips is using its leading global position in healthcare speech recognition to drive technology advancements towards reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through verbal information capturing in the electronic health record. 

Clinicians have long been enthusiastic users of dictation machines for recording large volumes of notes and correspondence, so digital dictation and transcription are natural steps for them which introduce many proven efficiencies.

WHIT '07, which will be held in the Austria Centre, Vienna, from 22-25 October, is keen to achieve consensus within the eHealth community and has developed a series of group packages for delegates from all sections of the community to facilitate this.

InterSystems has enabled the rapid creation, deployment and integration of critical applications in the world's most prestigious healthcare institutions. This feature profiles work in three countries and includes an interview with Director Phil Birchall.

This feature, sponsored by Stalis, outlines the risks that must be managed and proposes a solution that provides both the safeguards required and makes best use of the trusts? local data warehouses.

Ensuring that health service workers can communicate with each other effectively and the general public can reach those in the know is critical to fulfilling the NHS's remit.

This feature, sponsored by Huntleigh Healthcare, looks at how the company's systems make this progress possible and gathers views from the clinicians at sites involved in commissioning, deploying and using the new software.

Technology to support patients living with long term conditions is in the news with the recent announcement of three sites to pilot telecare and telemonitoring. It's little wonder there is so much interest from providers and suppliers.

Leading GP software supplier EMIS is thinking big at HC2007 - Europe's largest health informatics conference, which takes place in Harrogate this month.

The rapid digital evolution in e-health requires efficiency in the IT space like never before. In this feature, sponsored by Kodak, we explore solutions provided by grid-based technology

In this feature, 1st Retinal Screen examines the key issues in Diabetic Retinopathy Screening, discusses how they can be overcome and provides examples from PCTs that have been successful in meeting these targets.

This special feature examines how the Qute programme will not only offer GPs an easy way of reconciling bills from secondary care trusts with their own record of patient referrals but also ultimately save them money.

First DataBank Europe examines the key elements of their involvement with NHS Connecting for Health - enabling safer prescribing, dispensing and improved patient care through the provision of drug related clinical decision support.

In these articles we look at some current working examples that demonstrate how the concept of collaborative care and the development of managed clinical networks has become a reality.

This sponsored feature, produced by E-Health Insider in association with Graphnet, looks at three very different scenarios where Graphnet solutions have delivered benefits to patients and clinicians.

In this feature, produced with Codegate, suppliers of the LabelTrace system developed by QuickTrace, we discuss how automating label production can lead to dramatic improvements in accuracy and turnaround.

Articles looking at how organisations can better manage their data warehouses; how they can handle migration of legacy data; and how they can deliver search tools to help all staff find and use data more effectively.

Making information flow smoothly between different health and social care agencies is a shared goal around the globe and this feature profiles some UK services that have made it happen by working in collaboration with specialists in4tek.

This feature, produced with Stalis Ltd, argues that healthcare organisations need to look long and hard at the quality of the data they propose to migrate into the new, integrated systems and speed up their plans.

Is practice-based commissioning (PBC) the pill that will shrink the near-£800m NHS deficit, or will it cause an adverse reaction? Whatever your view, the drive for universal coverage of PBC is under way and accelerating toward the December 2006 deadline.

This feature, sponsored by Graphnet, brings together some practical examples of information sharing in two NHS trusts in Salford and South Staffordshire.

In this feature, sponsored by Philips, we look at the role digital dictation and speech recognition can play in reducing the strain on the healthcare system's financial and human resources.

PCS Web - a groundbreaking new e-record system that gives everyone in the primary care team instant online access to patients' records - is being piloted in three PCTs in England from next month.

E-Health Insider is pleased to join forces with First DataBank Europe for this feature focusing on clinical decision support, exploring both a variety of current issues and the future potential of clinical decision support to make healthcare safer.

E-Health Insider and Telewest Business have created this feature which gives the background to the targets for efficiency gains, provides examples of NHS organisations that have used ICT to make gains and offers 10 top tips for boosting productivity.

The traditional GP's surgery is changing. From internet appointment booking to fingerprint recognition technology in the waiting room, a new breed of electronic services is starting to transform doctors' - and patients' - lives.

This E-Health Insider feature, supported by in4tek, brings together together case studies and news about developments in integrating health and social care information in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Canada.

This E-Health Insider feature, supported by Teknical, offers a guide to current trends in e-learning, practical advice on choosing e-learning packages and some sources of further information.

Tom Nawojczyk, chief executive of in4tek sets out the compelling need for critical information to be available in a coherent, shared record across all concerned health and social care agencies.