October 18th 2011

NHS CHOICES SITE WIDE RELEASE 20

Please be aware that there will be an upgrade (release 20) to the NHS Choices website (including the Information Prescription Service (IPS) on Tuesday 8th November 2011.

We do not anticipate that there will be any impact on the IPS; however, you may notice that the system is running slightly slowly on the morning of the release.

As always, if you do notice any issues with the IPS, they should be reported directly to the NHS Choices Helpdesk (0845 6504865, thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk).

September 9th 2011

NHS CHOICES SITE WIDE RELEASE 19

Please be aware that there will be an upgrade (release 19) to the NHS Choices website (including the Information Prescription Service (IPS)) on Tuesday 13th September 2011.

We do not anticipate that there will be any impact on the IPS; however, you may notice that the system is running slightly slowly on the morning of the release.

As always, if you do notice any issues with the IPS, they should be reported directly to the NHS Choices Helpdesk (0845 6504865, thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk).

August 31st 2011

UPDATE FROM DAVID MANNING

I am making some changes to the Breast Cancer Pathway which will affect the prescription pad. A new pad will be created this week. The changes introduce a number of information brochures in other languages. As such, within the 'Symptom Awareness and Early Detection', 'Diagnosis and Staging', and 'Treatments' Key Information Points there is now a subject folder entitled, ‘Information in other languages’ where the new content is found.

August 25th 2011

IPS FIXES IN R19 (SEPT 13TH)

There are seven Service Desk tickets that will be fixed as part of R19.

Front end:

• The 50 mile search radius will limit at 50 miles
• Prescribing history search to recognise double barrelled surnames
• When saving an IP as a favourite – it will not add to the Prescribing History
• Resolve preview and print problems (Cushing’s syndrome)

Editor view:

• Remove repeating entries in Taxonomy
• Ensure there is no hardcoded directory information in new topics
• ‘Upload snippet’ - fixes source title in xml upload

August 22nd 2011

UPDATE ON GENERIC CANCER PATHWAY AND OTHERS (UPDATE FROM DAVID MANNING)

There is currently an issue with the generic ‘Cancer’ pathway. Many Key Information Points have disappeared.

However, the ‘Cancer rehabilitation and living with cancer’ pathway contains many of the same items held in the generic pathway but in a layout, that I hope you feel is superior to the generic ‘Cancer’ pathway.

Please encourage people to use the ‘Cancer rehabilitation and living with cancer’ pathway.

You will also notice that information about ‘Advanced cancer and palliative care’ is now held in a separate pathway, as is information about ‘End of life and bereavement'.

All three pathways are incomplete and will evolve (the subject structure for each pathway was drawn from workshops, carried out late 2010 and April 2011, you will notice that some subject categories do not contain any content).

I would welcome content suggestions, particularly content by non-cancer organisations, that may enhance these pathways.

I will be developing a prescription pad for each in the next few days.

August 5th 2011

IPS UPDATE FOR IPFS AND NIMS FOLLOWING NEW RELEASE 18

I am pleased to report that the IPS has been upgraded and is now operating release 18 as of 27th July with new enhanced features. The new release went live with no reported problems on the go live date.

Frustratingly there was a delayed impact to the IPS following an upgrade to the main NHS Choices site that occurred on 29th resulting in a loss of the ‘all cancer’ pathway for up to 4 hours. The fault on the IPS was caused by a fix on the main NHS Choices site and was not a technical fault of the system. This has been reviewed and recommendations made to ensure that the risk of this occurring again is very low.

Please note: All problems with the IPS should be reported directly to the NHS Choices Helpdesk regardless of the nature of the problem. The Helpdesk is manned from 8.00 to 6.00pm Monday to Friday and is set up to manage all calls relating to content management and technical aspects of the IPS.

IPS HELPDESK 0845 6504865
thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk

July 27th 2011

JULY PATHWAY UPDATE

Download the latest pathway update from David Manning (PDF, 99kb).

July 15th 2011

IPS FIXES IN R18 (JULY 27TH)

Change request

• Add logos to chunked content

Back end technical fixes

• Jquery link change request/ Fix to jquery.
• Issues using iOS4.

Editor view

• Added: validation if trying to add an organisation that already exists in IPS database, i.e. hospital name.
• Fixed error messages in 'Upload/manage content' so that they display, to prevent upload looking successful but is not.

Front end

• Hyperlinks/urls included in NHS Choices content added to the IPs are now live, in preview and in PDF.
• Searching the prescribing history returns the IP details in latest first order. Also code change to allow scrolling after the search results have been selected.
• All ‘register’ links from IPS pages now go to IPS registration, not general NHS Choices personalisation registration.
• Email addresses longer than 40 characters should now able to be used.
• Ability to edit previously saved favourites fixed.
• Snippets have been fixed so that they work when javascript is turned off.
• Useful addresses are included in PDF/print in alphabetical order.