IT links new hospital to online health services

Customer overview

NHS Manchester helps to plan and provide health services for a population of more than 155,000. Its multi-million pound budget helps fund 28 GP surgeries, eight local health clinics and thousands of hospital treatments. In 2005, the Trust opened the ground-breaking Withington Community Hospital, which is expected to provide treatment to more than 120,000 patients a year.

Business need

The Withington Community Hospital is the first of its kind in the North West, and provides a walk-in centre, cyber-café and patient advice services. To enable the hospital and its patients to also take advantage of the new nationwide electronic health services, the Trust needed to ensure it had the right systems in place to link up with the NHS National Programme for IT.

Without any existing IT infrastructure, the Trust faced a mammoth task - with a finite deadline. Mike Jones, IT Programme Manager for NHS Manchester, comments: "We had a raft of technology choices to make, and we needed to ensure that we not only future-proofed our investment but also maximised the potential of the new systems."

Beyond the hospital's opening day, the Trust also needed to ensure the IT infrastructure and staff were fully supported on an ongoing basis to safeguard the continuity and quality of its health services.

Solution

To access the additional skills and resources required for both the initial systems roll-out and ongoing IT services management, NHS Manchester turned to Computacenter. They are now responsible for managing the hospital's entire infrastructure under a five-year managed services contract. "Computacenter understood the challenges of working in a hospital environment and had the expertise to deliver ongoing value to our IT services management," comments Mike.

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How Computacenter helped

Thanks to Computacenter's multi-vendor expertise, it was able to help NHS Manchester de-risk its initial investment in the new infrastructure and fulfil its technology sourcing needs through a single point of contact. More than 500 pieces of equipment were sourced from 10 different vendors. Due to the tight timescales of the project, Computacenter had to remain totally flexible throughout.

This multi-vendor experience also proved invaluable during the deployment and integration phase, as Mike explains: "We needed to ensure that we optimised the technology in terms of security, reliability and functionality. Computacenter was also able to ensure that our systems were able to support and integrate with IT initiatives, such as the National Network for the NHS and NHS Care Records
Service."

Migrating the hospital's 700 users to these new systems was also a challenge, as staff were used to working on 'green screen' computers. To ease the transition process, Computacenter provided comprehensive user training, floorwalking and a dedicated helpdesk.

Results

The transfer to the new systems was completed both on time and with minimal disruption to the hospital and its new patients. These systems are remotely monitored and supported round-the-clock by Computacenter from its Operational Command Centre and Service Desks.

"We now have an infrastructure that is fully integrated with electronic health initiatives, and we will be one of the first hospital's in the country to use the NHS Care Records Service," comments Mike. "We can also link to other Trust health facilities, and can guarantee these links thanks to the ongoing support from Computacenter."

Future development

Under the managed service, Computacenter is responsible for a range of IT services from patch and password management to maintenance and network connectivity.

"Ongoing service improvements are an important part of the managed service, and we will be working closely with Computacenter to identify future efficiencies," comments Mike. "It has already helped us to establish best practice IT service management processes and expand our use of ITIL, which will help reduce the volume of support calls and associated costs in the future."