The fund is open to applications (for financial year 2013/14) until midday on 15 January 2014.
The first round of applications for the Nursing Technology Fund are now being accepted.
The fund is open to applications (for financial year 2013/14) until midday on 15 January 2014.
In October 2012 the Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced the establishment of a £100m Nursing Technology Fund to support nurses, midwives and health visitors to make better use of technology in all care settings.
Applications can be made by nurse and midwife-led activities across trusts in England. These include community, mental health, foundation, acute or ambulance trusts that can demonstrate the benefits to staff and patients through technology.
The projects funded by the Nursing Technology Fund are hoped to improve patient outcomes through access to information and resources at the point of care, to use web based information to support self-care and health promotion, to treat an increased number of patients at home, to streamline care process and to improve access to services and reduce waiting times.
Jane Cummings, England's Chief Nursing Officer, said: ‘There are great examples where technology is working in this way in the health service and making a real difference - the digi pen for example which can capture written information which can then be directly transferred to an IT system. This can save time that would have been spent typing up written notes. The midwifery team at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust have been using digital pens since 2010 and have seen significant benefits including freeing up more time to care, efficient data capture and removing the risk of lost notes.
‘One of the other key technologies the Nursing Technology Fund is focused on is mobile technology such as notebooks or tablets. For the community healthcare worker, this helps with the accuracy of data and cuts down time travelling to and from the office to use IT systems, valuable time that can be spent with patients.'
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, added: ‘The fund will have a particular focus on practical mobile and digital technologies which will help improve communication, allow staff to do their jobs more easily and lead to better experiences for patients.'
The application can be downloaded from: http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/tsd/sst/nursing-technology-fund/