CUI guidance helps NHS organisations
The Common User Interface programme has produced more than 50 pieces of strategic, technical and best-practice advice for deploying Microsoft products and technologies. Now NHS organisations are starting to benefit from them, a new case study shows.
NHS organisations are using guidance developed by the Common User Interface (CUI) programme to stop “fire-fighting” and take control of their IT.
Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust, NHS Sheffield and Leicestershire Health Informatics Service are all part of the CUI early adopter programme, and are using its outputs to streamline their infrastructure and cut the time and effort they spend building and maintaining their desktops.
A case study produced for the programme shows that this is allowing them to plan for significant investment in new systems and to deliver a better, more cost effective IT service to staff.
The CUI programme
The Common User Interface programme started in 2005. It has been developed by Microsoft Services, the NHS IT agency NHS Connecting for Health, and NHS organisations.
And its aim is to help the NHS get the most out of the Enterprise Agreement that it has signed with Microsoft by making IT easier to deploy and easier and safer for NHS staff to use.
Its outputs include technical documents, NHS-specific guidance and “solution enablers” that help NHS organisations to pick out and implement what is most relevant to them.
Humber invests in IT
Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust is using CUI guidance to implement Windows Server 2008 and a new Active Directory ‘forest’ to control access to its systems and data.
It is also using the NHS Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 (NHS MDT 2008) to support a significant hardware refresh by moving from a manual desktop build process to an automated one.
Using the toolkit, the trust has been able to reduce its operating system images from 27 to 1, and to cut its desktop build times from 75 minutes to 15 minutes.
By March 2010, Humber hopes to have moved all the computers at its 287 sites to the Windows Vista operating system and to have them running Microsoft Office 2007. It will also be deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve collaboration between staff.
Sheffield and Leicestershire
NHS Sheffield is also using guidance from the NHS MDT 2008 to develop and document a formal desktop build process. It has created a standard image that includes Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2003 and core clinical systems and can now configure 20 computers an hour.
Leicestershire Health Informatics Service, meanwhile, is using guidance from the same toolkit to help implement Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager 2007 to manage its inventory and automate updates to servers and computers. It is also deploying Microsoft Forefront Client Security.
Benefits
The case study says that all three organisations have improved the resilience of their networks and cut deployment and configuration time. This has had benefits for staff, who now have access to a consistent desktop with all the applications they need on it, and more support time from their IT departments.
The three organisations have also made cost savings. In particular, they have been able to reduce their reliance on third parties; with Leicestershire saving £50,000 in licensing costs by cutting out other security solutions.