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Eighteen years after the advent of the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) why is investigating in such a parlous state? Ed Marsden, Managing Director of independent investigative consultants Verita, discusses why making improvements to patient safety comes second place to sorting out problems with the investigative process. In this article, Ed discusses three main areas for improvement: developing a consistent way of investigating aggregating data improving insights and information. Having been involved in hundreds of investigations, he offers his thoughts on how we can address current issues with investigation practices in order to make long lasting and widespread improvements in patient safety.

Our experience of attending the Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference and entering our patient safety initiative into the awards. We have a new app within Homerton which is featured on the hub. The Homerton University Hospital (HUH) Action Card App is an initiative that aims to bridge the gap between information/processes with clinical members of staff without the need to log into a computer, access the intranet, and finding the long black and white document which is never ending. The Action Card App has easy to read, 1-page coloured documents relating to local and national/local incident trends and Never Events. We entered the Patient Safety Learning Awards on the back of seeing the hub and finding content on there that was incredibly useful on a day to day basis. We genuinely weren't expecting to hear anything back from the Patient Safety Learning team as we are a small trust that not a lot of people know about, and we thought the standard of patient safety initiatives would be high, with many trusts miles ahead of us. I have to say, the team at Patient Safety Learning were nothing but lovely, from the moment the conversation started about the prospect of entering the awards. They all took the time for correspondence and they treated you as a person, as oppose to an entry. When we got the information that we had won the overall prize, we were gobsmacked and elated. The app team were overjoyed with the sense that our hard work had paid off and someone had taken the time to appreciate the work we have been doing at Homerton. We were asked to prepare a presentation prior to the awards, which showcased our work and to share with the attendees of the conference. The day arrived, with so much great work, inspiring talks and a general atmosphere of wanting to do more to keep our patients safe. I would like to thank everyone who heard our presentation (some may say performance) and thank everyone in the Patient Safety Learning team for their help with this process.

The Test Bed Programme brings NHS organisations and industry partners together to test combinations of digital technologies with pathway redesign in real-world settings. The goal is to use the potential of digital technologies to positively transform the way in which healthcare is delivered for patients and carers. In this document you will find: An evaluation from wave 1 Current NHS Test beds Information governance learning handbook A short video on NHS Test Beds programme - initial impact and next steps

Age UK explain what Telecare is and how it could help you live independently and stay in control of your health and wellbeing.  What will I learn? What is telehealth? How could telehealth help me? What is telecare? How could telecare help me? How to get telecare products and services What do I need to consider when buying telecare products? What should I do next?

The objective of this review is to contribute to the development of the GMC's policy in this area. Given the GMC’s role as a regulator of individual healthcare professionals (i.e. doctors) this study focuses on the types of requirements and standards applicable to or having implications for healthcare practitioners, rather than the regulation of healthcare providers (e.g. hospitals, surgeries etc.) or healthcare systems as a whole.   This article is aimed at doctors who are practising with telemedicine and would need to understand the guidance and regulation.

This review by Van Velthoven et al, published in BMJ Open, provides a systematic overview of standards for the development of health apps based on those for software of medical devices and clinical information systems. This article includes: a comprehensive search of standards. aims to improve the quality of health apps, and is a critical ’stepping stone’ to producing actionable guidelines for developers and adopters.

A guide from The Point of Care Foundation supporting clinical, patient experience and quality teams to understand how to use online patient feedback to improve quality in healthcare. This resource is a key output from an NIHR-funded research project called INQUIRE: improving NHS quality using internet ratings and experiences. It turns the research findings and key lessons into a practical output. It is designed to help healthcare staff interpret and respond appropriately to online feedback and use it to improve healthcare delivery.