Month: November 2022

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust has rolled out a new e-prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) solution to eliminate the need for paper records and improve the consistency of patient care.

Working with CGI, an independent IT and business consulting services firm, and Better, North Cumbria Integrated Care has rolled out the Better Meds ePMA solution to all of its community hospital inpatient settings.

The digital system enables North Cumbria Integrated Care to deliver increased quality and consistency of care for its patients across the trust.

Paul Fieldhouse, clinical director of pharmacy at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The new system is already transforming the way medicines are prescribed and administered across our hospitals. Of all our digital projects, e-Prescribing is the biggest step forward in patient safety.”

The solution facilitates the prescribing of medicines and the recording of its administration, plus supports pharmacy reconciliation and

NHS national data guardian Dr Nicola Byrne has advised national policymakers that they should ensure key suppliers must share NHS core values.

The guidance, provided as part of a blog on advice she has been offering on the proposed new federated data platform, appears to provide a warning about the expected award of the contract to Palantir, due to the risk of undermining public confidence.

“I have also counselled that the programme should remain mindful of the NHS’s core values, and how the track record and values demonstrated by any organisations procured to deliver on a large-scale data programme align with them,” Byrne said.

Palantir, which is the incumbent supplier, has been a lightning rod for concerns about the national patient database project, due to its close links to US national security agencies and right-wing founder Peter Thiel.

In a November blog post entitled ‘In pursuit of balance:

At the Tech UK London Health and Social Care Industry Dinner last night speculation was rife on who will be named the next national NHS chief information officer (CIO).

With a job advert published earlier this week, the favourite talk among industry insiders was who may be the person to fill the seat about to be vacated by Simon Bolton, interim CIO at NHS Digital, who had been due to become interim CIO at NHS England.

Bolton was at the dinner, but did not speak.  However the other national NHS CIO, Sonia Patel, did for the second year in a row. Patel joked that unlike her former NHS boss, Matthew Gould, now CEO of London Zoo, “I’m not planning to go to the zoo or jungle any time soon”.

A sign perhaps that Patel, who was first recruited in 2020 to be national CIO, before being unceremoniously moved sideways into

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a low-cost hearing test for newborns. Traditionally, the equipment for such testing is quite expensive. As newborns cannot let us know if they can hear something, the test is based on creating a noise within the ear canal and then listening to the vibrations created by the specialized hair cells within.

The UW researchers used cheap earbuds that are connected to a small microphone that can listen to the vibrations of the hair cells. A smartphone app then analyzes the sounds and can provide guidance to attend a specialist if abnormal results arise.

Performing a hearing test with newborns is important to make sure that they receive the support they require if it turns out that they have a hearing issue. However, in many places in the world, people do not have access to the testing equipment required for these procedures.

“There

Preceptis Medical, a medtech company based in Minnesota, created the Hummingbird Tympanostomy Tube System. The device allows ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeons to insert ear tubes in the comfort of their office. The procedure requires only local anesthetic and is intended to be less distressing for pediatric patients than the conventional approach, which requires general anesthesia.

The Hummingbird device provides a “one-pass” approach to ear tube placement, with an ear drum incision and tube placement occurring with a few simple manipulations of the device. Medgadget spoke with Steve Anderson, CEO of Preceptis Medical, back in March 2021. Since then, the Hummingbird system has received FDA clearance for an expanded indication in all children aged 6 months and up.

Medgadget had the opportunity to speak with Greg Mielke, Chief Commercial Officer at Preceptis Medical, about the technology and what the latest FDA clearance meant for the company.

See a