Keep up with developments in healthcare technology with the latest Innovation Through Technology supplement

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Self care: giving patients control of their health is a key goal for the NHS. A new web based tool that allows patients to set their own goals and, with GPs’ support, to monitor and make decisions about their own health offers a glimpse of the future.

Workforce: paper based management of NHS agency staff has historically been bureaucratic and prone to errors - with trust executives often ignorant of which agencies they use, or even how much they are paying staff. New systems can help trusts to ensure that they get the lowest prices, use the best agencies and gain valuable data on staffing gaps to shape future recruitment.

Telehealth: remote monitoring of patients taking the blood thinning drug warfarin avoids the time, expense and disruption of having to continually attend clinics for tests - and points to a way forward for telehealth for other conditions.

Infrastrucutre: clinicians trying to access patient data on PCs are often frustrated at the painfully slow process of logging in and out of applications dozens of times a day. One solution is a virtual desktop, where all the data is held on a single central server, rapidly accessible wirelessly or remotely from anywhere.

Download the supplement here