Fifteen leading organisations have called for a new body to oversee the development of patient records in health and social care. The Joint Working Group it is essential as the record ‘is likely to become the single most important unit of information in the NHS.’

The Health Select Committee has warned that the health bill is threatening efforts to achieve £20 billion in efficiency savings. Its report claims that cuts are being made rather than the introduction of structural changes needed if the NHS is to do more with less.

Two trusts have blamed performance problems on ‘issues’ with Cerner Millennium. North Bristol has had to return to paper processes while Wirral Teaching Hospital says the system is responsible for its seemingly poor performance on long waits.

EHI reports that Richard Bacon MP has called for a halt to all Cerner Millennium deployments following appointment problems and delays at the latest trusts to go-live with the system – North Bristol and Oxford. He said the two hospitals had been “brought to their knees” by the implementation of the new electronic patient record system.

The Royal College of Nurses and the Royal College of Midwives have called on the health bill to be dropped, claiming their repeated efforts to help make it workable have been ignored.

The DH is setting the pace for prompt payment of suppliers with figures showing that 95%, or more, were paid within five days between July and December 2011.

The 3millionlives project, to roll out tele-health and tele-care on ‘an industrial scale’, has been formally launched. EHI says a concordat between industry and government will allow local decision-makers to determine how it is delivered in their areas.

St Helens and Knowsley teaching hospitals has turned to the cloud to support its growing demand for storage, reports the The Guardian

GP commissioners feel left out of the development of 111 services and many fear it will not bring better services according to GP online.

A report by the NHS Future Forum declares that data belongs to the patient not the system. It calls on the NHS to use IT systems to share data about individual patients and service users in the interests of high quality care