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Email between patients and doctors would be cheaper and quicker, so why isn't it being used, asks the Patient from Hell On Christmas Eve, I received two snail-mail letters from the local hospital where I'd had day surgery to remove three nasty lumps a month before. One told me that one of the lumps had not been fully removed. It was dated 12 December, 12 days before I received it. The other was an appointment for me to see the surgeon about this on 29 January. It was dated 20 December, four days before the letter arrived. The hospital is about three miles from my door. Both these letters...

Medical staff, patients and parents are using a new system that has saved lives Every year, more than 200 infants are born in Northern Ireland with heart disease. I work at the Royal Belfast hospital for sick children and as specialists in paediatric cardiology, we deal with a majority of these cases. For the past few years we've been supplementing our traditional care with a telemedicine scheme that offers patients, parents and our colleagues a new way to interact. Like thousands of hospital departments across the UK, we deal with resourcing difficulties. Not only do we cope with our current...

*** Vinegar, the patient from hell, on NHS Hack Day, an attempt to devise useful apps to improve health Earlier this year I asked: Where have all the IT champions gone? My grumble was that, on one side, geeks in NHS IT departments are not pushy enough and, on the other, clinicians and NHS bureaucrats who had in their youth been techie-minded, had lost the fire in their bellies. The result is that nobody in authority in the NHS pushes the self-evident benefits of digital healthcare. This is bad for patients. To my delight, I find I was wrong. There are hundreds of potential champions lurking around...

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS trust stroke consultant wants research into telemedicine for early supported-release for patients Professor Tony Rudd, the lead clinician for stroke services at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS foundation trust, has said there needs to be more research into the use of telemedicine services to aid the early supported discharge of stroke patients. "I think that telemedicine could be expanded. I am very keen to do research into it," Rudd told Guardian Government Computing. Applications of telemedicine in stroke treatment could be in releasing people from...

*** Vinegar, the Patient from Hell, applauds the aims of the Power of Information, but wonders who will implement it So, the Department for Health finally announced its information strategy , The Power of Information. Its aims are splendid, quite like what I was calling for last week : • Consistent use of information standards • A culture shift – "in the way patients, users of services and professionals think, work and interact" • Data sharing across the NHS and local councils, to help "integrated care" • Information will "inform research and measure quality" • Easy...

Cabinet Office transparency and open data chief to become national director for patients and information Tim Kelsey has been appointed national director for patients and information by the NHS Commissioning Board. He will take up the post in July and step down as executive director for transparency and open data in the Cabinet Office after only six months in the role. According to the job advertisement, the purpose of the national director for patients and information is to "develop and deliver national strategies on public and patient engagement, intelligence and informatics". It says...

Northern Ireland trust awards five-year deal for voice and data communications Belfast health and social care trust has awarded BT a deal worth up to £20m for a range of voice and data services. Under the five-year contract, BT will provide around 17,000 users with communications technology to support the delivery of healthcare across Northern Ireland. The services will be delivered as part of a two-phase strategy that will cover IP telephony and a suite of unified communications services. The trust said that it hopes that the contract will help drive cost savings. The first phase of the project...

Mental health trust launches patient-held electronic health record MyHealthBox South London and Maudsley foundation trust has launched an online health record that gives patients direct access to their health records. The MyHealthBox web portal uses Microsoft's HealthVault platform and allows patients to contribute to the system directly. According to the trust, it is the world's first patient-held electronic health record in the field of mental health. The online service allows patients to store and manage their own health information. It also gives patients the opportunity to choose what...