Gloucestershire Hospitals has become the first National Health Service Trust in the country to install a virtual telephone operator system using advanced speech recognition technology to answer, transfer and make calls 24 hours a day.The Trust, which provides acute hospital services to half a million people in the Gloucestershire area will use the system to answer incoming calls and ease pressure on its switchboard operators, who currently handle up to six thousand calls every day. 

More people than ever used the national e-health library during November. More than 50,000 visits were recorded for the month, which saw the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) celebrating its second birthday. The final number was boosted by an awareness week, at the end of November, which encouraged existing users to tell friends and colleagues about the information available from the e-library. 

By Duncan Eaton. Reproduced by permission of eGov Monitor Weekly. Providing thousands of suppliers using myriad different systems with the opportunity to trade electronically with the health service is the challenge facing the Purchasing and Supply Agency of the NHS. Duncan Eaton, who heads the Agency, describes how work is going on with pilot supply confederations to give greater leverage to the NHS over quality and service and bring benefits to suppliers.