By Frances Hesselbein and Rob JohnstonThe book features the best thinking from top experts on strategies for change, sustaining growth, and leading transition. Written in a concise style it highlights a stellar panel of contributors including Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, William Bridges, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Strategies for change leaders are discussed as are the skills they require. It explores leading transition with a new model for change and managing by commitment. The book is one title in The Leader to Leader Guides four-volume set that draws from the most compelling articles that have appeared in the Drucker Foundation’s award-winning journal Leader to Leader.

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A new telemedicine service providing information about activities, companies and other information related to the use of information and communication technologies to deliver health care to patients at a distance has been launched. The service is provided by the Healthcare Computing Group at the University of Portsmouth and is sponsored by the NHS Information Authority. Telemedicine has the potential for bringing radical change to health and social services. Bringing patients and clinicians together through an electronic link gives the opportunity to completely re-think how services are delivered. The Department of Health believes that it is not the technology that will make the difference, but the technology will stimulate a re-engineering of health care services.The service will be used by Doctors, clinicians, other health professionals and administrators, who are thinking of setting up their own telemedicine or e-health project. They will be able to find out about other practitioners who may have already done similar things. All health authorities are now required to develop an ICT strategy that includes the application of telemedicine to local problems. In 2005, it is planned to start the implementation of a national broadband network that will also enable a more general take-up of telemedicine.

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With just ten months to go to the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act some of the implications are starting to emerge. Details of contracts ranging from weapon systems supplied to the Ministry of Defence to bandages for the health service can be disclosed from January 2005. A survey of seventeen central government departments by the Information Commissioner found that work on revising contracts to remove confidentiality clauses is progressing slowly.Whilst the Freedom of Information Act does provide for disclosure of commercial information to be restricted in certain circumstances all contract revisions are aimed at making this the exception, rather than the rule. The issue is complicated by the law of contract, intellectual property rights and the Common Law of Confidence. In a number of areas working groups of contract review teams and private sector suppliers have been set up to work out solutions. In other cases issues are being resolved in workshops.

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