Industry news

Private firms now treat one in five NHS patents according to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The rise in the treatment of NHS patents through private firms increased after GPs began to offer patients a wider list of locations to receive treatment.

The employment of the private sector to provide patient care rose under the labour government as a way to reduce waiting times and increase patient capacity.

David Worskett, director of the NHS Partners Network said: "While the overall proportion of NHS care delivered by the independent sector remains very low, at less than 5%, independent providers are very pleased to be making what is clearly a valued contribution to the NHS and patients in these challenging times.”

Concern has increased within elements of the NHS regarding the effect of privatisation with a spokesman from the British Medical Association (BMA) saying: “The BMA has had concerns for a number of years about the ethos of promoting competition between different providers within the NHS as this could lead to a fragmentation and possible destabilisation of patient services".

Nick Patience, explains the issues surrounding the disposal of information and the consequences businesses will face if they do not have a comprehensive information governance policy in place

Businesses today are dealing with a seemingly unstoppable increase in the volume of data they are creating, receiving and storing, and this presents significant challenges when it comes to effectively managing, analysing and understanding the information and insights contained within. In order to maintain a competitive advantage, companies must extract the key information from their structured or unstructured data, whilst making sure that any unneeded data is disposed of efficiently.

If large amounts of data are left unmanaged, businesses can be faced with burgeoning storage costs, increased legal costs and, in some cases, it can even cause system malfunctions. In addition to this, storing vast amounts of information across disparate locations makes it more difficult to identify and utilize business critical information. It is vital for companies to understand that all of their data cannot be kept forever and appreciate the importance of only retaining the information that is relevant to the business. However, businesses must be aware of, and comply with regulations and legal standards when disposing of unwanted data. Those that fail to do so could find themselves facing potentially expensive legal proceedings and fines. It is therefore critical to implement defensible disposal, through information governance policies and processes that ensure organisations do not leave themselves open to legal action.

Courts today don’t take any lenience on companies that claim to have “innocently” destroyed data, and a finding of ‘spoliation’ can certainly lead to losing a winnable case and very serious penalties. The spoliation of data doesn’t necessarily have to be intentional. Technological advances in the 21st Century make it a lot easier to create, delete and alter any kind of electronic data. Data can now easily be destroyed, altered or damaged by the click of a mouse, a stroke of a key or completely automated computer processes. This kind of misfortune resulting from human error is difficult to prevent. However, we often see companies instructing employees to delete information without regulation, enforcement and auditing, which is completely illogical and can be more damaging than not deleting the information all.

There have been numerous cases where companies have been reprimanded for holding organised deletion days, or “shred days”, which have led to the spoliation of data needed for future litigation. A good example of this occurred when an Arthur Andersen partner sent an email message to employees working on the Enron account, reminding them to “comply with the firm’s documentation and retention policy”. The Andersen partner didn’t order the destruction or shredding of evidence, but because anticipation of future litigation was potentially obvious, the implication in her email was to “get rid of your suspect data”. The timing of the email message also created suspicion, in that just 21 minutes separated her e-mail from an entry in a record of her current projects in which she wrote that she was working on a case involving potential violations of federal security laws.

This case highlights the need for companies to adopt a watertight information governance process that includes a thorough defensible disposal strategy. A structured system would have been capturing, indexing, applying retention processes, protecting content on litigation hold and efficiently disposing of the irrelevant content on a regularly scheduled basis, avoiding any potential legal fallout.

Big data presents a huge opportunity for those willing to think and act quickly. Setting up a defensible disposal system is clearly an integral part of this. The build-up of data is going to continue growing at an incredible rate, with data production estimated to be 44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009. If companies don’t act now, we will see desperate measures of deletion, like that displayed by the Arthur Anderson partner, that will inevitably lead to potential law suits and cause the potential loss of million.

Network specialists Cisco have entered into acquisition proceedings for Cloupia, in a deal expected to be worth €125million.

Cloupia provides automating datacentre hardware, the patented technology will be added to Cisco’s increasing software portfolio.

The acquisition is the very latest of a series of high profile buy-outs by Cisco and is the 8th company takeover in 2012. The deal is expected to be finalised by the second-quarter of 2013.

The US Air Force will scrap a significant ERP (enterprise resource project) after the project delivered poor capability for cost.

Over €1 billion had been spent on the project before the Air Force determined that a estimated further €1.1 billion would have to be invested in order to continue the ERP at a reduced level.

A spokesman said that the project had “not yielded any significant military capability," and that the USAF would instead be “developing an entirely new strategy versus revamping the ECSS system of record again".

The Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local have become the first to be hosted under the new site.

The new domain will also include public sector agencies and bodies, with the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, Driving Standards Agency and the Planning Inspectorate having already been transitioned to the GOV.UK site.

GOV.UK which went live last month has been designed to host all department sites, generating savings of over £50 million a year.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said that the new site will offer improved services: “Information will be easier to access and more open, and we will save the taxpayer millions of pounds in the process".

Energy giant and owner of British Gas, Centrica, have reported that it is on track to make £1.4 billion after tax profit in 2012.

In a report to shareholders today Centrica said that the company was on track to make a six percent increase on profits from 2011 despite reduced business in certain departments due to the global recession.

Subsidiary British Gas announced an increase in energy prices in October which followed increases from other energy firms.

The shareholder report comes during an investigation by the FSA over an industry whistle-blower’s claims that energy markets have been manipulated.

Cisco Systems have moved to build small cellular stations in response to the high demand from mobile network operators as customers use increased Wi-Fi.

The small cellular stations provide network operators with increased coverage and are popular within built up areas that face increased usage.

The move will bring Cisco into direct competition with other communication infrastructure manufacturers, however the company will focus to specialise in small stations rather than tower based stations.

The UK government have ranked 6th in a 6 monthly data request report from Google published every 6 months, showing information requests from global governments.

The UK ranked behind other EU countries including Germany and France, asking 1,425 times for data from the information giant.

Google detailed that it had complied with 56 percent of requests from the UK in the first 6 months of 2012, refusing requests including the removal of a video hosted on YouTube that complained of racism within a local police agency.

Despite the technology being a few years old now, there is still a lot of cloud-related hype doing the rounds, and especially for those companies that have not had much experience engaging with external IT suppliers, separating the wheat from the chaff can be difficult. Therefore businesses need to be aware of several crucial factors in order to make their migration to the cloud as smooth and as fast as possible.

• Firstly, companies have to be aware of the content that is located in the cloud and the targets they aim to achieve, for example regarding quality, costs and flexibility. This is essential to get a suitable solution avoiding unnecessary costs. In the process of selection companies should choose a cloud provider who is able to create added value with innovation and a convincing operating model.

• Over-inflated promises of the providers are generally not trustworthy. Therefore references should be claimed in order to check the offers in terms of their cost benefits and quality.

• A specific drafting of a contract is very important. Every flaw should be excluded, otherwise after the contract is signed the customer can sometimes be showered with change requests, even regarding Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and customer-specific runbooks. Inevitably, this leads to expensive and unnecessary transition costs.

• In general, it should be clarified that the customer retains the entire control of its own IT, especially when it comes to critical business systems.

• Fast migration depends on the choice of the right cloud model which covers the customer’s needs and wants. Experience has shown that hybrid cloud services are popular because they unify the aspects of flexibility, scalability and data security.

• A monolithic outsourcing strategy can lead to there being a lack of expertise across all levels of the cloud management function; multi-sourcing however, allows a company to partner with different external suppliers who are specialised in a certain service. For this approach, only cloud providers without a “Vendor Lock-in” are qualified. This then brings with it its own issues of managing the delivery of multiple third parties and challenges in service governance. Businesses which deploy an overarching management platform to comprehensively orchestrate various cloud infrastructures will have the advantage of greater flexibility.

IT environments are, in general, very complicated infrastructures and therefore migrating a multitude of different applications to the cloud that each adheres to their own configuration is not a task that should be taken lightly. Choosing the right provider(s) to help make migration as painless as possible is the first step businesses will make in their migratory journey, and following these tips should help ease the transition.

Outsourcing business processes abroad remains popular, with the promise of huge cost savings still attracting many advocates. With the Government recently stating that rather than restricting outsourcing, it is to encourage service providers to set up delivery centres in the UK, perhaps now the scales are beginning to tip the UK's way.

When considering dictation costs, the promise of cheap hourly labour rates from businesses prepared to undertake the transcription in far flung corners of the world was tempting for many organisations. However, comparing these costs with those from businesses based solely in the UK requires a working knowledge of the transcription process and an understanding of the way the prices are calculated.

The hook used by many overseas providers to attract UK businesses is their perceived low service costs. But often the rates quoted are for the length of time taken to type the document, rather than the length of the dictation sound file, so it's a bit like comparing apples with oranges. If in doubt, organisations should ask service providers to undertake a free cost analysis based on expected service levels.

Obviously there are major language considerations too. Much of the work undertaken includes plenty of words and phrases capable of tripping up the unwary or perhaps individuals that do not possess English as their first language. A few of the common mistakes clients have experienced in the past include Warsaw instead of Walsall, Council for Counsel, disperse for disburse and insure for ensure. The list is almost endless, particularly if you need to write to Mr Lees in Leeds about his lease.

Correcting mistakes just lengthens the whole process, either at the service provider end or back in the UK where the client spends more time correcting the finished document. All of which, adds expense and narrows the perceived cost advantage of overseas providers.

Given the nature of the service, fast turnaround times for transcribed dictation are critical to the quality of service provided, particularly those servicing the legal sector, where time really is money and the cost is more dependent on how quickly the individual talks throughout their dictation. And in our experience, for lawyers in particular, this can be pretty speedy.

The legal services sector is a large consumer of transcription services and has issues peculiar to the sector beyond the more traditional issues surrounding Data Protection. The recent changes to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) guidelines have toughened up the stance taken with UK law firms outsourcing their work overseas and that includes dictation. It is far more difficult to assess who exactly has access to information once it has left the European Economic Area (EEA) or more specifically the UK.

UK based service providers also offer much longer office hours, often from 8 in the morning to midnight, with even longer hours if required. Again some corporate lawyers find the need for transcription in the small hours of the night, long after secretaries have gone home and these extended hours services provided in the UK fit the bill perfectly.

With UK service providers working a similar calendar to their clients, enjoying and suffering the same holidays and national celebrations, there is less chance of unexpected interruption to the service with office closure days falling out of sync.

Many service users like to speak to the typists undertaking their work; it's something we actively encourage to ensure difficult requirements are addressed before transcription begins. This is an aspect of the service to have grown from the reduction in support staff in organisations in almost every sector, both public and private. When work is complicated, needed urgently or is expected to be ongoing, clients will speak with the typists, reflecting an approach that ensures outsourcing firms become very much part of the wider support team that organisations now rely on.

The ongoing recession ensures many legal and medical secretaries seek employment with businesses like DictateNow that can utilise the years of experience they have in their particular fields of expertise. Many law firms now understand the benefits of using transcription service providers that can offer hundreds of qualified legal secretaries, all based in the UK and ready to go at a moment's notice.

The transcription sector continues to grow and the number of jobs created is large, with a growing number of UK organisations sending their dictation to UK based businesses, rather than overseas - definitely a cause for optimism for the UK economy.

The importance of the outsourcing industry to the UK economy cannot be overestimated, with the Oxford Economics report for the Business Services Association in 2011 putting the total value in the region of £200 billion. The sector supports around 3 million UK jobs and the argument for many more jobs returning from overseas is getting more persuasive as each day passes.