An initiative to drive up standards across the tourism industry, piloted by six local councils, has been judged a success by a new report. `Fitness for Purpose – lessons from local authorities’, details the results of the Fitness for Purpose scheme, tried out by local authorities in Blackpool, Bournemouth, Camden, Canterbury, Greenwich and West Sussex.The scheme is designed to promote better inspection and regulation of tourist accommodation, while, at the same time, offering a lighter touch regulatory approach to well-run businesses already meeting minimum standards. The accommodation providers are given a checklist against which they can measure themselves. They can then draw up plans to correct any problems that are identified.The aim is to reassure consumers that hotels, guesthouses and Bed and Breakfast accommodation meet minimum legal and safety standards, and to give businesses the support they need to raise standards in essential areas such as health and safety, fire and food safety and complying with trading standards regulations.

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Family doctors may soon be able to check on a patient’s recovery after a stay in hospital by sending mobile phone text messages. In an article in today’s edition of BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, researchers describe how they have developed and tested a wireless monitoring system that could help detect changes in a patient’s symptoms at a distance.They say keeping up-to-date with a patient’s condition once they have left hospital can help doctors to detect suffering earlier and allow them ‘to activate a well-timed intervention’. The team, from Italy, also say that the growing use of mobile phones and the Internet by people in general provides ‘important new methods for communication between doctor and patient.’The researchers from Reply-planeT, an Italian company offering integrated communication services, and from the Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan, say their Wireless Health Outcomes Monitoring System – WHOMS could reduce the need to use printed questionnaires in monitoring the health and quality of life of patients and that this should make doctor-patient communication easier.

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