eHealth updates - 27 September 2012

New policy, guidance and e-health initiatives from across the UK. For more information about the e-health theme see Quality and Safety e-Bulletin: e-health.

Some of the resources linked to are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.

Carers UK: Carers and telecare (PDF 1.04MB). This report suggests that despite huge potential benefits of using telecare and telehealth, families caring for ill, frail and disabled people are still facing barriers to accessing the service. The report is based on a survey of over 4,200 carers and found that 62 per cent were unaware of the technology available to help with caring. It calls for co-ordinated action from providers in order to increase take-up of telecare services.

ehealth Insider: Devices and desires. This article discusses the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) movement where clinicians who want more mobile working can use their own devices such as smart phones and tablet computers instead of NHS provided equipment. The article quotes Alison Wallis the RCN eHealth Advisor and the recently published RCN guidance on nursing staff using their own mobile phones for work purposes.

Good Governance Institute (GGI): Care and support at home: an audit of telecare services in England. This report, which contributes to the debate about how care services in the future need to be developed, provides a number of recommendations aimed at Government and local authority officials about how telecare services and user outcomes can be improved. It is targeted at policy-makers, local authority councillors with an interest in adult social care, local authority directors of adult social services, and health and wellbeing board members. The report is based on analysis compiled following a number of requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sent to all upper-tier and unitary local authorities in England.

HI-ProfILE (Health Informatics Professional Identity, Leadership and Education): Dr Martin Murphy talks about Individual Health Record. NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS) Clinical Director Dr Martin Murphy talks about the background of the Individual Health Record (IHR) in his latest blog.

Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR): Clinicians’ expectations of Web 2.0 as a mechanism for knowledge transfer of stroke best practices. This study probes health professionals’ perceptions of Web 2.0 as a first step towards developing an Internet platform to help stroke patients in their recovery. The authors found that the use of interactive Web 2.0 platforms may be limited by professionals’ lack of time and computing knowledge.

JMIR: Smartphone versus pen-and-paper data collection of infant feeding practices in rural China. “This is the first study showing that smartphones can be successfully used for household data collection on infant feeding in rural China. Using smartphones for data collection, compared with pen-and-paper, eliminated data recording and entry errors, had similar interrater reliability, and took an equal amount of time per interview. While the costs for the smartphone method were higher than the pen-and-paper method in our small-scale survey, the costs for both methods would be similar for a large-scale survey. Smartphone data collection should be further evaluated for other surveys and on a larger scale to deliver maximum benefits in China and elsewhere.”

JMIR: Innovation in weight loss programs: A 3-dimentional virtual world approach. “The rising trend in obesity calls for innovative weight loss programs. While behavioral-based face-to-face programs have proven to be the most effective, they are expensive and often inaccessible. Internet or Web-based weight loss programs have expanded reach but may lack qualities critical to weight loss and maintenance such as human interaction, social support, and engagement. In contrast to Web technologies, virtual reality technologies offer unique affordances as a behavioral intervention by directly supporting engagement and active learning.” 

JMIR: Understanding the factors that influence the adoption and meaningful use of social media by physicians to share medical information. “Based on the results of this study, the use of social media applications may be seen as an efficient and effective method for physicians to keep up-to-date and to share newly acquired medical knowledge with other physicians within the medical community and to improve the quality of patient care. Future studies are needed to examine the impact of the meaningful use of social media on physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors in practice.”

Medical Protection Society (MPS): Convenience shouldn’t compromise confidentiality, says MPS on GPs using tablet devices. “With the advent of more portable communication devices, such as smartphones and laptops, we’ve already seen a number of MPS members receive patient complaints about confidentiality breaches – for example, a doctor reading a patient’s file on their laptop in a cafe, or a mobile phone with patients’ phone numbers being left on a train."

National Information Governance Board (NIGB) Newsletter issue 7 September 2012. This issue includes information on the new arrangements for the Ethics and Confidentiality Committee which gives approval for patient identifiable research. It also provides a statement clarifying the position of the Information Governance toolkit.

NHS Clinical Connections. The current edition of NHS Clinical Connections focuses on the power of networks and their potential and includes a ‘talking head’ by Susan Hamer,  Clinical Lead for nursing in the DH Informatics Directorate, on nurses and the importance of informatics.

NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH): Picture Archiving Service (PACS) launches blog. PACS Programme Head Alasdair Thompson has launched a blog on PACS. PACS has also launched a Twitter account, @NHSPACS. You can also sign up to the PACS Transition Bulletin.

NHS CFH: Interoperability Toolkit. The NHS Interoperability Toolkit site content has been refreshed and now includes social media options and a feed for its newly-launched Twitter account, @ITKISCF.  
Sign up to the ITK mailing list. This will provide the definitive source of information about the ITK information sharing challenge fund.
How to apply to the Information Sharing Challenge Fund.  

NHS CFH: NHS Pathways site refresh and Twitter launch. NHS Pathways has had a site refresh and launched a Twitter account, @NHSPathways. 

Scottish Government: Scotland's Digital Future - Delivery of Public Services. "Our vision for Scotland is a country in which: digital technology provides a foundation for innovative, integrated public services that cross organisational boundaries and deliver to those in most need, and for services for business that promote growth; digital technology captures patterns of service use and feedback, so that users of public service are more directly involved in service design and improvement".