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NPS releases mobile app for antibiotic reminders NPS has launched a new app for iPhone and iPad to help patients remember to take their antibiotics correctly. The new Antibiotics Reminder app allows users to set reminders for each dose of antibiotics, track whether doses are taken correctly and record progress in a daily recovery diary. The app can search for antibiotics by brand name or active ingredient, with predictive text generating a list of potential matches from an inbuilt database. After selecting the form (e.g. tablets), strength and how often the antibiotic is used, the app generates a set of modifiable alarms to remind the user to take each dose. When it is time for their next dose, the user receives an alert from the app and a prompt to enter whether that dose was taken on time, early, late or not at all. This information is tracked and can be reviewed later. This is the second smartphone initiative from NPS following the release of its interactive Medicines List app in June last year. An NPS spokesperson said that while the Medicine List app was designed primarily for regular medicine users or people on multiple medicines, the Antibiotics Reminder app also caters for more sporadic medicine users who are only prescribed antibiotics occasionally. The free app is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (with operating systems iOS 5 or higher) by searching for ‘Antibiotics Reminder’ on Apple iTunes or on the App Store on mobile devices. General information about antibiotics and antibiotic resistance is also provided in the app, including a link to a survey for users to provide feedback to NPS.
Secure message exchange market opens up Healthcare providers using secure electronic messaging services will now be able to communicate more easily following the announcement of a collaborative agreement between three leading service providers. Global Health, HealthLink and DCA, which service the industry with the ReferralNet, HealthLink and Argus products respectively, have formed Secure Message eXchange (SMX) to open up secure messaging channels to each other’s customers. The three companies claim to service over 85 per cent of the current market. The arrangement will be similar to that which exists in the mobile phone industry, in which the company responsible for the outgoing communication pays a wholesale transaction charge to the organisation managing delivery to the end point. The collaboration is aimed at overcoming one of the main stumbling blocks to wider use of secure message exchange, as until now users could only send and receive messages from practitioners using the same product. The partners said the basis for the exchange is the
recently gazetted Secure Message Delivery (SMD) standard. Each vendor will focus on developing to the standard, which makes the technical integration easier. They plan to commence a controlled release within the next three months. HealthLink’s head of operations for Australia and New Zealand, Geoffrey Sayer, said a number of technical issues are being worked through before a general release, These include end to end messaging, ensuring payloads are harmonised, and defining the role of public key infrastructure (PKI) and the end point location service (ELS) so that the transition infrastructure is able to support the processes within the SMD specifications. Dr Sayer said messaging service providers would not have to do integration work with each separate clinical software vendor. “As long as one of the SMX partners is at each end of the transaction it will work, although I expect that we will all integrate with many in common,” he said. Current users of the electronic messaging services will not need to do anything different through their clinical software.
“Nothing is different,” Dr Sayer said. “That is part of the benefit.” As each service has its own user directory, allowing specialists for instance to send letters to GPs also using the service, work will be done to relate each directory to each other and through the ELS. “Each organisation will still maintain their own until a national directory is really available,” he said. Membership of the SMX will be open to other software companies that have systems based on the SMD specification, are prepared to provide service levels of support, work on delivering sustainable approaches around infrastructure and only exchange messages based on agreed standards. Andrew McIntyre, managing director of the MedicalObjects secure messaging system, said he would consider taking part in a network only when the right infrastructure was in place. “From what I gather, this is a management-level agreement, and the devil is in the technical details, which have not been worked out,” Dr McIntyre said. “We will join a network when the infrastructure like NASH and ELS and payload compliance makes this a safe reality. At the moment it’s not.”