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5.04pm: NHS England has published the names of the panel which will oversee integration pioneer bids.

11.03am: Public Health England has published a report about excess deaths in winter 2012-13. It follows controversy over the fact there have been more deaths than expected since the beginning of 2012, which was uncovered and revealed by HSJ last month. PHE’s report is here. More coverage will follow.

PHE has also published a letter from its chief knowledge officer about the decision to stop the weekly reports which highlighted the issue.

It says the analysis will not resume, but that its flu monitoring team at Colindale will now publish a separate regularly report on deaths, as well as their influenza reports.

Experts suggested various reasons for the deaths, with suggestions including viruses, service cuts, population trends, randomness. The cause is not known but PHE says today: “There have been more deaths than expected but the explanation would seem to be a combination of circulating influenza and cold weather.

“Many of these deaths are preventable and these data illustrate the need to work harder to protect vulnerable people from both flu and extremes of weather. The number of excess deaths this year is greater than in the past two years but is by no means exceptional when compared to the last 12 years (see Figure 2 of the attached report).”

10.23am More news from HSJ this morning: our reporter for the south west Sarah Calkin has this story about howinvestment in new technology has unintentionally caused a decrease in performance.

The introduction of robotic surgery at Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust caused the trust to miss cancer waiting targets for three consecutive quarters.

The trust bought the £2.5m Da Vinci robot in December last year, and excitedly told the world about how it would improve the standard of its prostate surgery.

However this led to a surge in demand, causing an increase in waiting times.

10.13am Here’s a story about how a trust in Lincolnshire has been forced to defend the salary paid to its chief executive. The chairman of the trust said it would be a “grave mistake” not to boost the boss’s salary by £25,000 to £170,000.

Find out who we’re talking about by clicking here.

10.08am There’s loads of new stories and features on HSJ today. First, here’s our London reporter Ben Clover’s interview with Boris Johnson. The London mayor takes the opportunity to argue that his office should have a bigger role in planning healthcare for the capital, and that he wants to explore how to make better use of the NHS estate.

8.45am: Good morning, the associated loss of health benefit for the NHS from poor use of medicines is estimated to be at least £500m a year. On HSJ’s Commissioning channel today, Bedfordshire CCG explain how they are turning a problem and the catchphrase “medicines optimisation” into a meaningful impact on patient experience.

Its strategy for medicines management has resulted in savings of over £1m a year from greater use of generically available statins, and a move from a ranking of 126th to 17th in the national “better care, better value” indicators in two years.