Digidentity joins GOV.UK Verify online citizen authentication trials
Digidentity has become the second secure online identity provider to join the public beta testing service for GOV.UK Verify, following Experian which joined in October. GOV.UK Verify is being designed as a "federated" way for people to prove their identity when they are accessing government services, by choosing from a range of accredited providers. It is promised to replace the current "Gateway" service for online accreditation - which has been deemed insufficiently secure by the National Audit Office - by 2016. The service entered private beta in February, with testing on three selected services, followed by public beta in October, which means any services can start to test and use the system. The project has signed initial supplier contracts with five companies, of which the remaining three - Mydex, The Post Office and Verizon - are set to join the public beta "when they're each ready", according to a statement from the GOV.UK team. The public beta includes a document checking service to allow identity providers to validate people's driver licence and passport details, according to the Government Digital Service. In a blog post, the Verify team says: "To use the public beta service at this stage, you need to have a passport or photocard driver's licence and have been financially active in the UK for a while... we'll be starting work to add more official validation services to the document checking service so that people who don't have a valid driver licence or passport, can use alternative types of official evidence instead." As well as its new work on Verify, Digidentity also provides the Dutch government's citizen ID solution 'DigiD'.
Pictured: British passport by Stratforder / Wikimedia Commons
GOV.UK Verify blog: https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/
Outcomes Based Healthcare and Big Data Partnership win £1m for diabetes project
Health technology firm Outcomes Based Healthcare and big data specialist Big Data Partnership have secured a grant for a £1m digital health project from national innovation agency Innovate UK (formerly Technology Strategy Board). The companies are working on a personalised, data-driven approach to improving diabetes care. Until now, big data and advanced analytics have been used in healthcare to predict cost of care, or chance of hospital readmission, the partners say in a statement. This project will take this technology a step further; creating a dashboard that provides deep insights into disease progression, to enable doctors and patients to make better decisions about their health. "It will use massive amounts of data to accurately predict an individual's outcomes and allow pre-treatment of medical complications that really impact the lives of people living with diabetes - heart attacks, strokes, eye disease, kidney disease and limb amputations", they say. "Applying data science and outcomes insight to healthcare systems can fundamentally disrupt current disease management, allowing greater precision in care delivery, and 'pre-treatment' rather than simply prevention," said Dr Rupert Dunbar-Rees, founder of Outcomes Based Healthcare. The diabetes prototype will be developed and tested by hospitals and GPs by the second quarter of 2016. Once complete, the team plans to apply the approach to other diseases. According to a 2014 Diabetes UK report, diabetes accounts for about 10 per cent of the NHS budget with 80 per cent of these costs due to complications. Demographic changes and the high obesity rate mean the overall costs of diabetes are predicted to grow over the next 20 years to account for 17% of the entire NHS budget.
Outcomes Based Healthcare: www.outcomesbasedhealthcare.com
Big Data Partnership: www.bigdatapartnership.com
Innovate UK: www.innovateuk.or
Award for NI Electronic Care Record supported by Orion Health
The Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record (NIECR) has won a Health Service Journal award for "Enhancing care by sharing data and information". Judges praised the way clinicians in all care settings were able to access a range of information about patient care from different providers, and the project's pragmatic approach to solving the problem of information sharing. Since going live in July 2013 the NIECR is now being used by more than 18,000 health and social care professionals to care for over 472,000 patients, or nearly 27% of total NI population. The system integrates more than 70 million messages from sources spread through acute, community, pharmacy and social care sources. The system has received positive user feedback with more than 94% of respondents in a recent outpatient clinic survey saying NIECR had improved the quality of patient care. The NIECR implementation and delivery team have managed the integration over 60 disparate systems, such as patient administration systems, laboratory, radiology, medications and clinical documents throughout Northern Ireland to provide care professionals and support teams with a single view of health and social care information. Part of the infrastructure for the NIECR solution was provided by electronic health records provider Orion Health, including a web-based portal allowing clinicians to see details of past or ongoing activity including diagnoses, investigations and encounters across the HSCNI. "Using the NIECR to look up patients data saves clinicians significant time every day, compared to using existing legacy systems", said Des O'Loan, ICT strategy manager on the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Board. "For clinical pharmacists, there has been a very significant reduction in the time required to carry out the reconciliation of patient medication on admission from an average lapsed time of 3 hours 45 minutes to 22 minutes." In a recent outpatient clinic audit of the system 27% reported that duplicate lab tests had been avoided; 8% had duplicate radiology exams avoided and 3% avoided an additional outpatient review appointment being booked.
Orion Health: www.orionhealth.com
