Sheffield Teaching Hospitals are to pay £13,000 for inadequate software licensing, after an ex-staff member reported them to the Federation Against Software Theft.

The hospitals had failed to get enough licenses for Esker's SmarTerm emulation software. The failure was reported to FAST by a presumably disgruntled ex-employee of the NHS trust - a common way for such investigations to start.

The trust said it was a genuine error, according to Computerworld.

FAST Chief Executive John Lovelock said: “Anyone who thinks that FAST is an organisation without clout needs to think again.”

In other news the BMA has obtained agreement from the NHS to check the quality of care record data before sharing it between doctors' surgeries and primary care trusts. PCTs must also be satisfied that patients have been adequately informed before uploading records onto the central spine.

The real future of the NPfIT rests on the result of today's election. ®

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