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Mobile and tablet apps have enormous potential for training and professional development in healthcare, says Guy Smallman The health industry is responding to the increasing popularity and availability of technological innovations, such as tablets and smartphones. Health and wellbeing applications are estimated to make up approximately 40% of new smartphone apps currently being developed. This is a huge market and only set to increase as the benefits become more apparent and smartphone and tablet technology become more widespread. Health applications have the potential to be adapted and used by...

Chief executive of Whittington Health, Dr Yi Mien Koh, explains to Jessica Fuhl that the biggest challenge to integration and efficiency is getting staff on board Whittington Health has ambitions plans for the future. It hopes to achieve foundation trust status by 2014 and its first step to ensure it made sufficient efficiency savings in order to do so was to fully integrate local community services with the hospital last year. In January it had reached 98% of its cost improvement programme (CIP) target for the financial year as a result. The integrated health organisation is a merger of the formerly...

A recent baby boom in the UK has highlighted the problems faced by understaffed and overstretched NHS maternity units. Denis Campbell reports on a roundtable debate about the future direction of obstetric care Despite countless inquiries, initiatives and ministerial pledges, going back two decades, maternity care remains one of the NHS's problem areas. Concern about it means it is rarely far from the headlines. In recent weeks there have been two significant pieces of evidence published that will help shape practice affecting the UK's 800,000 births a year. The National Institute for Health...

Patient advice service NHS Direct is considering options to replace the capacity of three call centres which it is being forced to shut NHS Direct is to close three of its call centres next year, following landlord East of England ambulance service trust, giving it notice to quit two of the sites in Chelmsford and Norwich. A third site in Ipswich will close because it is supported by the other two. A spokeswoman for the digital and telephone advice service said the closures were regrettable, but NHS Direct had no choice. A total of 120 staff will be affected, the majority of whom are nurses, although...

Strategic health authority says use of its eWin portal is expanding outside the region NHS North West's extended eWin portal is being piloted in Yorkshire and Humberside, while 98% of north west trusts have signed up, according to the strategic health authority. The online service allows trusts to compare performance statistics and share knowledge about workforce issues. "eWin is steadily increasing individual membership," Donna Sidonio, assistant director of workforce strategy at NHS North West, told Guardian Healthcare Network. "It is also expanding outside the north west,...

Staffordshire, a place with a bad record for hospitals, has some practical ideas on keeping people out of them, says the Patient from hell A quick canter round the stands at Smart Healthcare Live got me enthusiastic about the technology on display. A lot of it targeted my needs as a patient, like digital dictation systems that would cut down the time taken for out-patients reports and discharge summaries to reach me and my GP. And e-prescription systems, which would doctors could check for contra-indications while prescribing medications. But again this year, I was disappointed that the exhibition...

Chief information officer for health plans to leave job by the end of next week The Department of Health has announced that its chief information officer Christine Connelly will leave at the end of this month. She will be replaced in the post, for which she was paid more than £200,000, on an interim basis by Katie Davis. Davis, who currently works for the Cabinet Office as the executive director of operational excellence for the Efficiency and Reform Group, will start work on 1 July. "The Department of Health faces a major reorganisation of its top structures that will result in fewer director...