e-HealthExpert.org - Primum non nocere

The Department of Health's informatics directorate is safe from immediate change as is the job of its head, Christine Connelly.

The government has promised an "information revolution" for patients in its white paper, 'Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS'.

The NHS white paper published yesterday by health secretary Andrew Lansley gives a major role to Choose and book in radically extending patient choice across the health service.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley has announced that primary care trusts are to be abolished as part of a massive reorganisation of the NHS that will start with the Department of Health taking more control of its finances to ensure a measure of stability.

BMA GP representatives are calling on the government to halt the uploading of any more Summary Care Records while a review of the programme takes place.

The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust has signed a deal with SRC to implement the company's electronic discharge summary.

A Staffordshire hospital is using software from clinical correspondence specialist Medisec Software to deliver discharge documents to GPs within 24 hours.

Patient Opinion, the website that allows patients to post comments about the health services they have used, has set up a new service for Westminster MPs.

Two hundred thousand Summary Care Records were created in a seven day period in June, as the Department of Health considered the scheme as part of its review of the use of IT in the NHS.

BT has finalised the contracts for the 25 RiO sites across the South of England that formed part of the extended contract that it signed with NHS Connecting for Health last year.

INPS is to seek NHS Connecting for Health accreditation for its Vision 360 data hub as a GP system.

NHS Central Lancashire is using Intel's Health Guide with COPD patients in Preston so they can monitor their condition from home.

A review of the UK's response to the swine flu oubreak has urged the Department of Health to commission an independent evaluation of the "highly innovative" National Pandemic Flu Service.

NHS Direct is to pilot its first web and telephone-based support service targeted at patients at risk of developing long term conditions.

Doctors' representatives have stopped short of backing calls for the withdrawal of co-operation from the Summary Care Record programme. They have also refused to seek cancellation of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

NHS Redbridge is aiming to reduce costs while reorganising services with the help of a risk stratification tool.

More than 20,000 Summary Care Records have been viewed out-of-hours via the integrated solution provided by software supplier Adastra.

Healthcare IT system suppliers INPS and EMIS have announced that they have formed a 50:50 joint venture to implement an interoperability gateway.

Primary care IT supplier EMIS and secondary care supplier System C have announced that University Hospital Aintree has gone live with a system to give its urgent care clinicians access to information held in GP systems.

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson has admitted that the Treasury is concerned abut the government's plans to hand secondary care commissioning to GPs.