The South East Coast Ambulance Service already uses a Microsoft network infrastructure to make information readily available wherever and whenever its employees need it. They have taken further steps towards offering all staff real-time information by becoming one of the UK's first adopters of the new Windows 7 operating system.
South East Coast Ambulance Service serves a population approaching five million people, spread across an area of 3,600 square miles. Their 3,000 staff work from 65 locations and respond, on average, to one 999 call every minute.
"The DirectAccess feature in the Enterprise edition of Windows 7 is a godsend. We can all sleep peacefully at night knowing that whatever network our users touch, they belong to us."
When it comes to improving outcomes for patients, the organization's vision is simple: to exceed international best practice. Ian Arbuthnot, director of IM&T says: "In order to support that, we need to innovate technologically as well as clinically. We need to be in a position that IT is never a hurdle to innovation, but rather a supporting platform."
Microsoft foundations
Following the merger of the former ambulance services' in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, South East Coast Ambulance Service revolutionized its operations by migrating three legacy IT systems into a single state-of-the-art network; allowing users to access systems from anywhere within the organization.
It chose Windows Server 2003 R2, Exchange 2007, SQL 2008, Office 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 as the building blocks for its information infrastructure. "Having embedded our infrastructure and software, we were eager not to lose the momentum," says Mr. Arbuthnot.
Therefore, the organization is now in the process of upgrading its operating system (OS) to Windows 7, along with its supporting server architecture, Windows Server 2008 (R2), in order to take advantage of several security and productivity features that are ideally suited to NHS estates.
Secure remote access
The first of these is DirectAccess, which allows remote users to connect securely to central resources without the inconvenience of going through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Mr. Arbuthnot says the philosophy behind South East Coast Ambulance Service's campus-wide infrastructure - or indeed any other access deployment - is to allow staff to access anything from anywhere with the appropriate security passwords and permissions.
"We treat everything outside our local area network (LAN) as a hostile network - even the NHS N3 network, across which we still ensure everything is encrypted," he says.
Fast, secure file downloads
Mr. Arbuthnot adds that another perfect example of Windows 7 and R2 working in harmony is BranchCache. Again, this offers huge benefits to organizations with outlying sites because it lets users download most files held centrally in seconds - overcoming many of the "slow network" complaints that are often heard across large wide area networks (WANs).
"It does this by saving a copy of any file on our intranet which is accessed locally within a remote site. It means that whenever a user in one of our remote sites requests the same file as a colleague at that site, they can receive it almost immediately, since the data is downloaded from the local cache, rather than via the WAN from HQ."
Protecting drives
Windows 7 continues to offer BitLocker, which was first launched in its predecessor, Windows Vista, and which is consistently rated as one of that operating system's most valuable features. BitLocker provides organizations with full and largely transparent encryption on hard drives akin to that previously provided only by third-party products.
Windows 7 includes a new upgrade - Bitlocker to Go - which extends the same protection to any USB storage devices by restricting them with a password. "It means we can set a central policy requiring our users to apply BitLocker protection to removable drives before they can write to them," says Mr. Arbuthnot.
This goes some way to solving one of the most contentious problems for NHS security specialists: avoiding loss of data on memory sticks without compromising staff's day-to-day ability to perform.
A pain-free way to best-practice IT
Mr. Arbuthnot believes that a proactive attitude to technology innovation has allowed the organization to realize these benefits fast, and without painful deployment overheads.
"Prior to upgrading to Windows 7, we participated in Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for the rollout of the new operating system." TAP gave the organization the opportunity to provide real-world feedback on Windows 7, and a head start in learning all about the new OS.
"We're using a facility called MDT 2010 to automatically migrate our computers," Mr. Arbuthnot adds. "This allows us to roll out several machines concurrently - including all our bespoke software and gadgets - in around 25 minutes. It has dramatically improved our throughput of new-build machines."
Windows 7 includes a further feature that will continue to drive a less burdensome support regime, long into the future. This is Problem Steps Recorder (PSR).
"It allows any employee who is experiencing a difficulty with Windows to effectively record the sequence of actions that led up to the OS misbehaving; then share it with our helpdesk," says Mr. Arbuthnot.
"It records keystrokes, mouse-clicks and screenshots and ties it all up in a zipped file that can then be emailed to our technical support team. It's a much more efficient - and time-saving - way to sort out those little glitches."
Reliable technology
There is one final piece of paramount importance in the IT jigsaw puzzle: the end users themselves. Mr. Arbuthnot says the take-up of Microsoft technologies the organization has implemented so far has been very successful.
"By introducing these new technologies we have introduced a system people can rely on 24/7. As an example, since we installed Exchange 2007, the email system has not experienced a second of downtime in nearly three years," he says.
"At the same time, I believe the complexity of IT should rest with IT and should never be passed on to our users. For example, we can't be asking them to change their passwords every five minutes and to have a different password for this, that and the other.
"Our job as IT professionals is to soak up all that hard work so that the interface for the user is seamless, effortless and as user-friendly as it possibly can be - and for that we need the help of reliable technology. I believe Windows 7 has much to offer us in that respect."
Dr. Bill Crounse, M.D.
Dr. Bill Crounse, M.D., is senior director, worldwide health for Microsoft Corporation. Dr. Crounse is responsible for working with industry partners and healthcare organizations to help them benefit from using Microsoft technologies and solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Crounse was vice president and chief medical information officer for Overlake Hospital Medical Center and the Overlake Venture Center in Bellevue, Wash. Also, read Dr. Crounse's Healthcare Web log to get more insights into the latest technologies and trends in the healthcare industry.