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21/03/2012

The Yorkshire Mafia Conference 2012

Yorkshire’s biggest and best business event

The Royal Armouries, Leeds

March 21st and 22nd 2012

  • A jaw-dropping line up of speakers
  • A real business community working together

Even if you aren’t coming to talk to us about the ways we can revolutionise the way infomration rich organisations work then you should come for the event and the speakers, the networking and the buzz.

http://theyorkshiremafiaconference.com/

Yorkshire Mafia logo

Delegate tickets are free, booked via the Conference website and open to everyone from the Yorkshire business community (you don’t have to be a Mafia member to attend).

There’s packed Seminar line up, including the first ever (at any Conference anywhere) Billion Pound Panel, featuring some stellar Yorkshire entrepreneurs who combined, are worth in excess of £3 billion.

 

All conference enquires to geoff@theyorkshiremafia.com

Predictions for ICT in Healthcare 2012

Cloud2 Director Simon Hudson takes a look into the future and asks what roles ICT will be playing in the NHS over the next year.

What happened to the cloud? Last year there was much talk about cloud computing and NHS, with some providers being very bullish… not us. We continue to advise that there are major hurdles to adoption. Without doubt the biggest is the Data Protection Act and the national policy on storage of patient data. It’s simple really: you can’t let PID go outside England. So no Amazon EC3, no Office 365, no Salesforce.com or Google; at least not if there is patient data involved. It’s actually illegal and responsible directors could go to jail (in theory).Until this is addressed via a policy change or a decent English cloud offering then the benefits will be denied to the NHS

Meanwhile the NHS, as Stephen Dorrill MP observes, is going through a period of unprecedented change. This is manifested in terms of supremely challenging efficiency improvements and yet another round of reorganisation. With PCT clusters forming as precursors to whatever comes next (CCGs or some other TLA) and SHAs nominally evaporating, it is vital that organisational knowledge and records are retained. SharePoint can easily address this and we see trusts and clusters taking the same line as South West London in creating an intranet platform to act as their repository of organisational knowledge. That same platform also addresses the efficiency need and we anticipate greater uptake of eForms and workflow as a strong contributor to delivering the 4% year on year improvement the economic climate demands.

In parallel the National Programme for IT may not be actually dead, but it in palliative care and the prognosis is poor. An upshot of this is the new freedoms for trusts around clinical system procurement, with the market having become more open than for almost a decade. Some trusts may opt for a full, high investment, big bang EPR, while others will look to integrating existing and new, smaller systems in order to manage risk and spend while delivering near-term, cumulative improvements. I parallel we expect a strong push towards digitisation of records and a careful move towards clinical portals. We hope this will also let trusts use their SharePoint investments for interim and mezzanine clinical applications, such as our own Clinical Repository, InfoPath based eForms and as the basis for the clinical portals.

And finally, collaboration across organisations continues to grow. In 2011 the majority of rich intranet implementations included an embedded extranet, often partnered with our SEA external access technology (that provides user authentication and management without corrupting their AD). In 2012 we see this becoming a core driver for many projects; joined up, integrated healthcare requires joined up communications, data and processes.

As trusts realise the magnitude of the efficiencies needed the smart ones will take advantage of the £100k – £500k value they have in existing user licenses to deliver efficiencies, to push their increased workloads into SharePoint, to replace expensive point solutions and standalone technologies with newer, better solutions built on a common enterprise platform.

Simon Hudson is the co-director of Cloud2.

NHS Must Seize New Technology Says Former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell

Former health secretary and chair of the health select committee Stephen Dorrell has said in a recent interview as reported on the Guardian Healthcare Network that the NHS ‘Must seize opportunities offered by new technology’. This comes after Leeds Teaching Hospitals have used an IT system that they believe has saved them £500,000 over three years in the trauma, spinal and neurology theatres at Leeds General Infirmary alone. Stephen believes that better use and understanding of the IT technologies available to the NHS is key to reducing costs and inefficiencies. The trusts know that to be able to achieve there 5% savings of their budgets each year until 2015 they have to invest in new technologies that will save them both time and ultimately money.

In the last ten years at Leeds Teaching Hospitals the trust has implemented a computerised inventory management system that is similar to the ones that supermarkets such as Tescos and Asda use. This system allows the trust to check the stock they have on items such as pumps, mattresses and drip stands, which in return saves nurses time. Graham Medwell, e-business manager at the trust then reffered  to a survey from the Nursing Times which found that more than a third of nurses spend at least an hour finding items of equipment during an average shift. “We are talking about saving nursing time, stock control and stock checking which are a real bane in the life of most nurses,” This bar code scanning system has helped stop stock from being replenished when it doesn’t need to be and replenished when it does need to be.

The NHS Logistics Agency found that in a theatre without a computerised system the stock levels were around £1.6m, which were managed by 2 nurses in a paper-based system. the paper system proved a lot less reliable than the electronic systems as there were no mistakes being made and less time taken up by nurses which could have been more appropriately used on patient care.In 2002 Keith Lilley Head of supplies said “Purchasing within the trust has been successful over the last three years in delivering over £7.5m of cash releasing savings as well as over £20m cost avoidance savings.” Medwell believes that the costs of running systems like these are very low considering the amount they give back to you.

 

14/12/2011

Two Weeks Until the Cloud2 & Microsoft Free SharePoint Event in London

It’s now only TWO WEEKS until the Cloud2 and Microsoft free SharePoint in Healthcare event at Microsoft UK’s headquarters in Cardinal Place, London.

Microsoft UK, Cardinal Place, Victoria, London, SW1E 5JD

The event on Wednesday 14th December will cover SharePoint in the NHS, from NHS Information GovernanceKPIs and Workflows, to eForms,Dashboards and our Confer solution, Kinesis. Demonstrations and presentations will also be given by partners AvePoint on DocAve Backup and Restore, and Kodak on managing paper and electronic documentation.

Book now

Hosting the event with us will be NHS South West London Cluster, who will be sharing some case studies and experiences of the SharePoint projects we have worked on together.

You can view a full agenda on our dedicated events page, or download one by clicking this link.

To book your place, please visit our events booking page, or alternatively email us at events@cloud2.co.uk for more information.

For more information on the location of the event and directions, please visit the events page.

Time for suppliers and NHS IT users to work together

“If our shoes can now communicate with our MP3 player when we run – telling us how far we have run, how many calories we have burned then store that information on the web – then why, in the 21st century, can we still not perform simple tasks online in interacting with our health service?”

A very good question from Peter Dyke of Connecting for Health and Jon Lindberg of Intellect in today’s Guardian, and one which continues to baffle the vast majority of people in the UK who would rather use their computers to quickly gain answers and interact with the NHS.

In the article Lindberg and Dyke go on to outline a new partnership between IT suppliers and healthcare providers. They say the future of the NHS can be more IT literate. “By combining the expertise and experience of the customer and supplier sides, we can make greater strides to unlocking the true potential of health IT.”

The pair have drafted a proposal to create a ‘vibrant healthcare IT market’ which you can download here, and which IT suppliers can add their thoughts to until the cut-off date for submissions which is Wednesday the 30th November.

Read the full Guardian article here.

14/12/2011

Cloud2 and Microsoft Free SharePoint Event at Cardinal Place, London

Cloud2 and Microsoft will be hosting another free SharePoint in Healthcare event on Wednesday 14th December at Microsoft UK’s headquarters in Cardinal Place, London.

Microsoft UK, Cardinal Place, Victoria, London, SW1E 5JD


The event will cover SharePoint in the NHS, from NHS Information GovernanceKPIs and Workflows, to eForms, Dashboards and our Confer solution, Kinesis. Demonstrations and presentations will also be given by partners AvePoint on DocAve Backup and Restore, and Kodak on managing paper and electronic documentation.

Book now

Hosting the event with us will be NHS South West London Cluster, who will be sharing some case studies and experiences of the SharePoint projects we have worked on together.

Among the speakers are:

  • Simon Hudson, Director, Cloud2
  • Taran Sohal, Director, Cloud2
  • Colin Sweeney, Kings College Hospital
  • Alan Ruan, Web manager, SW London PCTs
  • Colin Labrum, Document Imaging, Kodak
  • Tim Foulkes, Enterprise Account Manager, AvePoint

There will also be a “Hands-On Lunch”, where attendees will get a chance to try out breaking Microsoft technologies, such as Slates/Tablets, Mango phones, Photosynth, Kinect, Kinesis, Lync and Office365.

You can view a full agenda on our dedicated events page, or download one by clicking this link.

To book your place, please visit our events booking page, or alternatively email us at events@cloud2.co.uk for more information.

For more information on the location of the event and directions, please visit the events page.

Cloud2 Raise Money on Fun Run for Cancer Research

The Cloud2 Team

Bradford-based IT Company Cloud2 were delighted to hand over a donation running in excess of £1200 to Cancer Research UK last Friday, after raising the money in September and October for the Bradford City Fun Run.

The whole team were involved in the fundraising and thanks to the very generous contributions of friends, family and business partners in person and online using JustGiving.com, a grand total of £1273.10 was donated, smashing the Cloud2 target of £800 two weeks before the run!

Cancer Research UK is a charity close to Director Simon Hudson’s heart after losing his mother to lung cancer. He says of the event: “I’m delighted and impressed that as well as the whole Cloud2 team, my wife and daughter both of whom do some work for Cloud2 also opted to participate. I’m very pleased that we can get behind something like this as part of the Bradford community and a great team.”

Director Taran Sohal is also delighted, adding:  “I’m proud of all the team who trained hard to take part in the Bradford City Run to support such a fantastic charity.”

The team are now looking forward to next year’s run, where some of them at least hope to take on the half marathon – it’s all for a good cause after all!

Microsoft Releases SP3 for Office & SharePoint 2007

Microsoft have released the third and potentially the last service pack for Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007.

Microsoft said in early October that Service Pack 3 (SP3) would be “likely final” for both Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007, which are scheduled to lose “mainstream support” in April 2012. During the mainstream support period, users have access to free product support as well as security and non-security updates.

After losing mainstream support next April, Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 will enter a five-year period of “extended support,” during which users can still receive security updates, but non-security updates will require a paid contract with Microsoft.

For more information, read the full article on RCP here.