Getting into Groove: Microsoft Groove supports secure, collaborative working

Microsoft Groove is part of the Microsoft Office suite. It provides users with a secure, shared, virtual office space, where they can post, view, edit and collaborate on documents, files and images. As such, it has much to offer NHS staff as they adapt to partnership and mobile working.

  One of the biggest changes to healthcare services in recent years has been the growth in partnership working.

For this to succeed, the NHS has had to look for ways of encouraging collaboration between teams, departments and across agencies. Microsoft Groove is a tool that helps people to collaborate more effectively and securely over the Internet.

“Groove is a way for people who are disconnected in some way to collaborate easily and safely,” explains Craig Donovan, a business productivity advisor with Microsoft. “That may be a mobile worker who needs to be connected with the office, or it may be a primary care trust (PCT) professional who needs to connect with a GP or a social care agency.” 

Virtual office space

Groove provides users with a shared virtual office space where they can post, view, edit and share documents, files and images. Once a file has been posted to a workspace, other authorised users are able to view the file and make changes that are automatically available to all other users of the workspace.
"Groove is a way for people who are disconnected in some way to collaborate easily and safely."
This kind of simple, ad-hoc collaboration could dramatically improve the way that many NHS professionals currently share information.

“If you take the example of a care plan, you’ve currently got multiple healthcare providers assessing a patient, asking the same basic questions over and over,” says Mr Donovan. “If you also have involvement from social services or another agency, there will be even more people asking the same questions.”

With Microsoft Groove, all these professionals could potentially post their assessments in a secure patient workspace, allowing them to see what information is already held before conducting their own assessment.

Groove on the move

Groove can also be used to connect the growing number of mobile NHS staff to office-based systems. A community nurse, for example, could post changes to patient records or referrals onto a Groove workspace, where colleagues could access them.

“The advantage of this approach is the community worker no longer needs to come into the PCT, allowing them to spend more time with patients and less time travelling,” says Mr Donovan.

Security features 

Groove also provides the NHS with a highly secure collaboration platform. The workspace is encrypted on the user’s hard drive, making it invisible to unauthorised users. Groove also allows managers to set very precise policies around workspaces, so that people can only see information relevant to their job roles.

“You have to be invited into a Groove workspace, and the administrator can decide who can issue invitations, who can be invited, and what they can do once they join the workspace,” explains Mr Donovan. “For example, you might say only people from the NHS can join a workspace, but nobody apart from senior managers can make changes to documents.”

Another advantage of Groove is how the software synchronises with the workspace – it only downloads changes to files, rather than complete files. This means users don’t get multiple copies of the same document, carrying minor amendments.

It also means that the files themselves are not transmitted; only small packets containing the changes are sent over the Internet. Since each packet is encrypted and digitally signed, users don’t need to connect to a dedicated, secure Internet connection known as a virtual private network (VPN), making Groove easy to use and highly cost-effective.
"Transmitting changes rather than whole files means Groove can be used with very low-bandwidth connections, saving on data transmission costs."

“Transmitting the changes rather than the whole file also means Groove can be used with very low-bandwidth connections, saving on data transmission costs.

Data is digitally signed, encrypted then able to be synchronised over the Internet, using devices such as laptop data cards or even mobile phones,” adds Mr Donovan. Indeed, healthcare workers in East Kent are using Groove for integrated care planning, using laptops fitted with data cards.

Simple interface - with lots behind it

The good news for NHS IT managers is that Groove is extremely simple to set up and use – minimising training costs. Groove’s look and feel is intuitive and similar to an instant messaging application, which many staff will use outside their offices.

A simple window shows who is ‘online’ and working in a workspace at any given time, and users can sign up to receive alerts when specific things happen – whether that’s a patient file being updated or someone new joining the workspace.

Despite this simple interface, Groove is based on industry standard XML programming technology, which means it can be integrated into virtually any back-end IT system. “Potentially, you can pull information from an accounting, scheduling or other back-office system, and present it in Groove,” says Mr Donovan.

“Similarly, you can set rules so that information posted in the workspace can be used to update back-office systems, so there’s no longer any need for people to re-key information gained by frontline NHS workers.”

When an endorsed user is invited to join a Groove workspace, they will receive a link to download the Groove desktop software, if they don’t already have it. The workspace itself is managed by a Groove Server application, which can run internally - for example on the NHS Network, or as a hosted service run by Microsoft.

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