The new IT systems in the NHS are on course to deliver better care and an estimated £1.14 billion in savings by 2014, according to the first annual Benefits Statement published by the Government. It shows that since its introduction, the National Programme for IT has already delivered a total of £208 million in savings by providing quicker, more efficient and convenient patient care.

The ePractice.eu portal hosts an array of exciting communities which gather members with common interests, offering messaging, blogging, calendar and document sharing tools as well as networking opportunities. Communities are open and help ePractice.eu users to connect even better with other peers to share knowledge and news. Any ePractice.eu registered member can start a community or voluntarily join one.

Large numbers of unnecessary deaths and avoidable medical complications in intensive care units (ICU) are attributable to the difficulties of treating high glucose levels in critically ill patients' blood. That is about to change for the better thanks to a new automated insulin delivery system developed by European researchers.

A new EU-funded information and communication technology (ICT) project is tackling issues of safety in newly developed drugs. Over the next three and a half years, the ALERT (Early detection of adverse drug events by integrative mining of clinical records and biomedical knowledge) project partners will work on an innovative computer system for a better and faster detection of adverse drug reactions (ADRs).

With this Briefing Paper, EHTEL aims to contribute to the re-balancing of deployment efforts between infrastructure and clinical services and between ICT experts and health professionals. It furthermore analyse what should be done to make additional telemedicine services sustainable to support the health and social needs of European citizens/patients.

The campaign "e-Inclusion: Be Part of It!" is part of the European e-Inclusion Initiative, which seeks to build on all existing e-Inclusion activities and identify synergies between them and improvements in overall e-Inclusion impact. You can be part of this campaign by submitting your events, projects, initiatives and experiences.

A consortium comprising six of Europe's leading hospitals, Glasgow University, Philips Medizin, and a Scottish SME - C3 Amulet Ltd. has been awarded a European Commission grant to lead a consortium researching the prediction of adverse events in the care of brain injury patients. The grant, totaling € 1.7 millions has been awarded under Framework 7, ICT-2007 5.1 Advanced ICT for Risk Assessment and Patient Safety.