#GPnews: NHS Digital casts doubt on fitbit interaction with medical records

17:00 Ending today’s live blog with some further good news.

The CQC has hailed the remarkable turnaround of a hospital trust placed in special measures three years ago.

The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust are now rated ‘good’ after a re-inspection.

This included its previously heavily criticised maternity unit receiving an ‘outstanding’ badge, reports BBC News.

CQC chief inspector of hospitals Professor Sir Mike Richards said the trust had ‘clearly benefitted from the support provided by the special measures regime’.

He added: ‘This is a truly remarkable turnaround for a trust that has faced very significant difficulties – senior management and staff deserve huge credit for this.’

15:00 A senior NHS digital lead has cast doubt on NHS England futuristic visions of patient data uploads going straight onto their medical record.

Director of digital transformation at NHS Digital, Beverley Bryant, told delegates from a Westminster Health Forum event in London this week: ‘GPs will not have the capacity to deal with an uncoordinated upload of information from patient generated health data.’

‘It would be wrong for us to say to patients, “Here have an app, grab a fitbit, and just load it all up to your GP.”’

NHS England has previously discussed the potential of wearable devices sending data straight to a patient’s GP, including in its 2015 ‘Egbot’ fun-run vision for the NHS’ future.

13:50 A poll by Sky News has found that people in the UK think the NHS is in decline and expect it to get worse.

Almost six-in-ten people think it’s going to get worse, and over half blame the Government.

Over a third also think NHS quality is worse than healthcare in other similar countries, according to the report, presented in full here.

12:25 Music has a similar effect on the brain as sex and drugs, according to a new study covered by unlikely health journal the NME.

Researchers reached the conclusion based on trials in which volunteers were given naltrexone, a drug that blocks the release of the brain’s own pleasure hormones and which is used to treat alcoholism and opioid dependence.

They found that participants under the treatment did not experience the expected pleasure when listening to their favourite songs, nor did they experience the same negative feelings when hearing music they tended to dislike.

Lead author and cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, from Canada’s McGill University, said the study was the ‘first demonstration that the brain’s own opioids are directly involved in musical pleasure’.

10:00 The A&E crisis in England was the ‘worst ever’ last month, according to a report on leaked data.

The BBC News report says that ’January appears to be the worst performing month since the four-hour target was introduced’.

A record number of people also waited more than 12 hours on trolleys in A&E, it claims.

The BMA said the data, reported to be compiled by NHS Improvement, showed the Governmnent was ‘failing to grasp’ the scale of the crisis.

But the Department of Health said it did ‘not recognise these figures’, suggesting it was ‘irresponsible to publish unverified data and does a disservice to all NHS staff working tirelessly to provide care around the clock’.