RECENT NEWS

The Clinical Services Journal is delighted to announce a free to attend educational webinar, sponsored by 3M, on 'Reducing the risk of surgical site infections - the role of antimicrobial incise drapes'.

The biggest ever EBME Expo took place across two days (28th-29th June) this week, attracting high numbers of clinical engineers and other healthcare professionals, to discuss key issues relating to EBME (clinical engineering), operating theatres, and procurement. The event has gone from strength-to-strength and, in recent years, has moved to the larger venue of the Coventry Building Society Arena.

​To digitally transform the NHS and ensure its long-term sustainability, the Government has mandated that all trusts across England should adopt barcode scanning of high-risk medical devices by March 2024.

Future Surgery, in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons of England, has announced that registration is now open for the highly anticipated 2023 Future Surgery event.

The Government has announced that the number of places in medical schools will rise from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and could reach 15,000 by 2031 as a result of the NHS’s first long-term workforce plan.

The NIHR has awarded more than £96 million to 93 NHS organisations across England. The funding will pay for new research equipment and technology. Around £20 million is going to smaller, regional NHS Trusts.

Recurrent bouts of systemic lupus erythematosus, marked by the body’s immune system attack of its own tissues, closely tracked with measureable upticks in growth in the gut of a certain species of bacteria.

Leading scientists at the independent Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) have confirmed that albumin, a critically important medicine for the NHS, can now be safely derived from UK plasma donors.

New research led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), and supported by NIHR Maudsley BRC, has found that community mental health patients who were prescribed antidepressants were significantly less likely to test positive for COVID-19 when admitted to inpatient care.

Patients who have shoulder replacement operations with surgeons who do over 10 of these operations a year, fare better than other patients, according to new NIHR funded and supported research.

The NHS is ‘neither a leader nor a laggard’ when compared to health care systems of similar countries, though on some critical measures of resources and performance the UK is falling well-below average, according to a major new report from The King’s Fund.

A national targeted lung cancer screening programme designed to catch cancer sooner or prevent it altogether has been announced by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Each year the programme - which will cost £270 million annually once fully implemented - is expected to detect cancer in as many as 9,000 people, deliver almost one million scans and provide treatment earlier.

Since 2010, Skills for Health has conducted regular large-scale national surveys to provide a comprehensive picture of new and emerging workforce challenges across health and social care. The 2023 edition of the State of the Workforce Survey has now launched to identify critical skills and development shortages at an individual, organisational, and systemic level to support the UK government, NHS, and social care leaders as they plan for the workforce of the future.

The EBME Expo medical equipment exhibition and conference will take place at The Coventry Building Society Arena, 28–29 June 2023. The event will showcase the latest innovations in medical technology, as well as imparting best practice with regard to its management, acquisition, use, and maintenance.

NHS staff will be given the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology to diagnose and treat patients more quickly as a result of a new £21 million fund, announced by the Health and Social Care Secretary.

New analysis published by the Health Foundation shows that 800,000 (12%) fewer patients in England were admitted to hospital in 2022 than in 2019, while at the same time the average length of time patients spent in hospital increased.

Urgent action is needed to break a ‘vicious cycle’ of unmanageable workloads, dissatisfaction and burnout that is causing UK doctors to take steps to quit, the General Medical Council (GMC) has warned in a new report.

Nearly 100,000 more people with cardiovascular disease than expected have died since the start of the pandemic in England, according to analysis published by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). On average, there have been over 500 additional deaths a week involving cardiovascular disease, since the pandemic began.

The mosquito species Aedes albopictus, a known vector of chikungunya and dengue viruses, is establishing itself further northwards and westwards in Europe, according to the latest data from ECDC. Also, Aedes aegypti, known to transmit dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, zika and West Nile viruses, has been established in Cyprus since 2022 and may continue to spread to other European countries.

A new online advice service to help the NHS and wider care system adopt and make use of new digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has been launched.