By Mr. Tom Mulhern, Founder of healthcare business intelligence solutions provider, Ardentia.
The emergence of GP consortia as the purchasers of most NHS treatment should mean that quality of care is scrutinised more closely than ever before. But from what we have seen so far, it is not a foregone conclusion that this will happen.

Agfa HealthCare announces that the Centre Hospitalier Alès-Cévennes (CH Alès) and the Centre Hospitalier Jean Monnet in Epinal (CH Jean Monnet), both in France, are extending their existing Agfa HealthCare solutions with an electronic archiving solution.

The Central Finland Health Care District was the first health care district to introduce the patient information system according to the new Finnish Health Care Act. In addition to the Central Finland Health Care District, Tieto's system covers patient information for almost all of the health centres in the region.

NHS Tameside and Glossop has partnered with Tunstall Healthcare to deploy a fully-managed telehealth service, which will enhance care provision for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and help the Trust meet QIPP targets.

Plymouth NHS ICT Shared Service has established an industry-standards-based approach that integrates the IT for the cross-organisational care services that it supports. This has enabled its users to protect existing investments, streamline care processes, reduce costs and improve clinical outcomes.

Agfa HealthCare announces that long-term customer Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg (ZOL) will implement IMPAX for Cardiology, IMPAX for Radiology and IMPAX Enterprise. This is the first time the three picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) will be implemented at the same time, creating a fully integrated, interdisciplinary system.

iSOFT Group Limited (ASX:ISF) has agreed contracts with Stockport NHS Foundation Trust for its strategic e-prescribing and medicines management (ePMA) solution and follows an agreement to extend its contract for iSOFT's PatientCentre patient administration system for a further five years.