in brief

Private finance initiative schemes worth around£1.1bn have been given the go-ahead to issue tenders. It means the green light for the largest ever capital scheme in the NHS - the£620m project to provide an extra 1,285 beds at Barts and the London trust.Others include the£306m scheme for a new acute hospital at University Hospitals Birmingham and South Birmingham Mental Health trust.

The next wave of 40 pilot sites to help patients with medicines, and cut waste, has been announced by the government.Part of a collaborative medicines management programme, it is being hosted by the National Prescribing Centre. Junior health minister Hazel Blears said each site would get£75,000 over the coming year.

Over 190 staff based in the offices of health service ombudsman Michael Buckley were due to take strike action yesterday - the day on which he receives his knighthood. It follows the imposition of a rejected pay offer which the Public and Commercial Services Union claims would not guarantee good performers reaching top pay scales within a 'reasonable' number of years.

Two appointments have been made to the Commission for Health Improvemen: Jennie Popay, professor of public health at Lancaster University, and Bruce Keogh, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, Birmingham, who is a leading figure in clinical audit.

Failure to wear proper protection in strong sun has led to a three-fold rise in male death rates due to skin cancer and a two-fold rise in female deaths since the 1960s, according to figures compiled by the National Radiological Protection Board.

Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub is to lead a£3m research project based at the cardiac research centre, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, which will investigate heart valve calcification in postmenopausal women.