RECENT NEWS

With NHS England waiting lists hitting a record 7.2m, it could be time to ‘be brave’ and ‘take a blank sheet of paper’ to design new patient care pathways. This was among several key points raised by health professionals as they discussed how elective care pressures can be alleviated through community MSK services, at Connect Health’s latest Change event.

A £300 million contract has been awarded to Bouygues UK to build Oriel, a new eye care, research and education centre in Camden.

Abbott has released the latest installment in the company’s multi-year Beyond Intervention series of global healthcare market research designed to uncover challenges that arise within the patient journey of people living with cardiovascular disease and to identify opportunities for patient care improvement.

Founders of University of Edinburgh-supported start-ups, including many that are seeking growth investment, will be given the opportunity to showcase their companies to an audience of investors, business support groups, and fellow entrepreneurs at two key events taking place next month.

A new comprehensive study of organ impairment in long COVID patients over 12 months shows organ damage persisted in 59% of patients a year after initial symptoms, even in those not severely affected when first diagnosed with the virus.

Polling from Ipsos and the Health Foundation shows support for the Government’s handling of the NHS among people in England is the lowest in two decades.

Following the successful IPS Environment, Cleaning and Decontamination conference, an educational webinar will further explore another key issue for the NHS: the challenge of managing healthcare waste. These educational programmes, supported by Essity and Sodexo, aim to inform and educate on key topics around infection prevention, as well as sustainability.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), responsible for Government policy on health and overseeing the NHS, has almost doubled its IT staff headcount since the start of the pandemic, according to official figures.

Patients waiting for organs will benefit from changes to organ transplant services designed to better match donated organs with recipients, increase the number of transplants and improve the patient experience.

A practical, operational checklist supporting NHS service managers to reduce long waits for outpatient appointments is now available from the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) and Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme (OPRT) teams.

Over-the-counter heartburn drugs could shorten the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) and reduce the chances of the bacteria that causes TB becoming drug resistant.

Researchers have successfully used a bespoke software and 3D printing to create a chest wall prosthesis for cancer patients.

National surveillance data shows laboratory reports of the virus are 66% higher than the average at this time of year. The biggest increase in laboratory confirmed norovirus has been seen in the group of those aged 65 years and over.

New analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has examined progress against the elective recovery plan to date and has set out new scenarios for what might happen to waiting lists in England in the months and years to come.

Health professionals should diagnose women under 65 with a urinary tract infection (UTI) if they have two or more key urinary symptoms according to a new quality standard published by NICE.

The Royal College of Surgeons has appointed Tim Mitchell as its next president. Tim will take office in July 2023, while the College’s current president, Professor Neil Mortensen, will step down in July following a successful three-year term.

A 19-month-old baby girl called Teddi has become the first child in the UK to receive a life-saving gene therapy treatment for the fatal disorder, metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD).

Tens of thousands of patients across the country will benefit from quicker access to tests, with 19 new community diagnostic centres (which will perform 1.1 million tests, checks and scans every year) set to open later this year.

New NHS figures show 21,273 operations were cancelled at the last minute in the three months to the end of December 2022, with hospitals feeling ‘winter pressures’ well before the winter had officially started. The data also shows 4,593 patients were not treated within 28 days of their cancellation, in a breach of the standard.

A single dose of the antibiotic azithromycin can help protect mothers from dangerous sepsis infections and death during vaginal childbirth, a new international study has found.