This year, instead of sending their Christmas lists to the North Pole in the post, children at hospitals across the UK have been getting the chance to share it with Santa Claus himself as he embraces the digital age. With the help of video communications technology from Cisco, Santa has been ‘dropping in’ to hospitals across the British Isles including Glasgow, Cardiff, Nottingham, Birmingham and London to find out what the children want for Christmas.

Galway University Hospitals is piloting Aura Healthcare’s patient flow solution in a bid to manage winter pressures and bed shortages at the 600-bed hospital. Enda Daly, Galway’s head of bed management, says the main objectives are to avoid patients being left without a bed, while ensuring waiting list targets for inpatient procedures are met.

Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust, also known as QE Gateshead, has selected BridgeHead Software (BridgeHead), the Healthcare Data Management company, to implement its Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) for a multi-staged image management project. QE Gateshead is actively taking strategic decisions across the Trust to create a comprehensive electronic patient record (EPR) and is embarking upon a data strategy to help facilitate the EPR of which the VNA plays a significant part.

IMS MAXIMS will be demonstrating the benefits of their portfolio of user-focused solutions, including innovative dementia software, to a major clinical audience at the Acute and General Medicine conference in London, 27 - 28th November.

A start-up established by medical scientists that develops mobile apps for cancer patients has taken first place in the inaugural Digital Health Masterclass Challenge hosted by Janssen Healthcare Innovation and Johnson & Johnson Innovation in London. The cutting-edge technology designed to personalise medical support for patients with cancer and improve the patient-doctor relationship highlights how digital health businesses across Europe are fast securing their position as key players in today's health ecosystem.

Northgate Public Services (Northgate) and Sollis have announced a successful deployment of the Sollis Clarity Patients solution with integrated Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACGs) across Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Swindon CCG, as a hosted service to over 100 GP practices across the areas.

Biomax Informatics AG will invest nearly 1 million Euro over the next 4 years to transfer its successful systems medicine approach from respiratory and chronic diseases to mental health. The European Commission is co-financing this step with €650,000 as part of the METSY project. In the project, Biomax will provide the knowledge management platform and data integration for consortium partners from industry, research and clinics who are searching for associations between psychotic disorders, lipid metabolism and metabolism-related diseases such as obesity and diabetes.