Road rave: roadshow features BT Lynx and work to improve communications at Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

With staff working across multiple sites and needing better access to training, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust realised it needed a better communications infrastructure.

BT Lynx, one of the partners taking part in this year’s NHS Knowledge Driven Health Roadshow, helped the trust to build a unified communications system, built on Microsoft technologies. Sally Whittle reports.

Like other NHS organisations, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is under pressure to deliver modern, efficient services within strict guidelines and budgets.

In 2006, it realised that it was not able to support effective information sharing using its existing IT infrastructure. So it began a project that led to a new, unified communications platform, based on Microsoft technologies.

New intranet, new communications

Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust is based around three purpose-built sites in Dudley and Stourbridge. It is the main provider of acute hospital services for its area. It also achieved teaching status from the University of Birmingham in 2001.

Because trust staff often work across multiple sites, they could not always access up to date information on patients, facilities or colleagues. The trust had a corporate intranet, but it was not robust or secure enough to carry all the relevant information - and staff often struggled to find information easily.

To work through these problems, the trust asked Microsoft partner BT Lynx to run stakeholder workshops and gap analysis, to identify specific clinical and corporate needs and how the IT infrastructure would need to change to support them.

The outcome was a decision to deploy a unified communications system, built on Microsoft Office Share Point Server 2007 (MOSS) and Office Communication Server (OCS). BT Lynx worked with the trust to build a new a new MOSS-based intranet, including document management capabilities and specialist sub-sites for specific clinical areas and corporate functions.

The trust will use OCS to bring together its current voice and data systems, and integrate them into the portal, says John Uttley, the trust’s deputy director of information. “I think we’re the first trust to implement this and integrate so tightly with our overall systems,” he says. “It will bring together our current voice system with our data, and allow the use of voice over the national NHS backbone.” 

Point of presence brings people together

The new portal provides distributed information around the network and enables staff to manage content, so they don’t have to rely on IT staff to do this.

Each department has control of its own content and information, and every member of staff has access to a personalised dashboard with specific items such as team calendars, performance reports and key performance indicators.

In addition, unified communications means free Voice over IP calls within the hospital and between Dudley Group of Hospitals and other trusts using OCS.

Another feature of the new platform is presence awareness – or the ability to tell whether a specific user is online and available to take messages or calls. For example, if a junior doctor needs to check a medical issue with a consultant they will be able to tell immediately if the right consultant is available – even if they’re working in a different building.

LiveTraining

As a teaching hospital, a large part of Dudley Group of Hospital’s work centres on lectures and training. Doctors attend lectures when they aren’t on duty, but attendance used to be difficult because of the demanding schedules that they have to contend with.

Using OCS, the hospital is now able to deliver training using Microsoft LiveMeeting, which can be viewed as a video conference over the Internet. This video conferencing technology could also be used to communicate with other professionals working at other sites.

“Consultants often work closely with other hospitals and a lot of time is wasted driving between sites,” says Mr Uttley. “With LiveMeeting, we can achieve the same thing – sharing information and providing second opinions – but without the wasted clinical time. The knock-on impact is a reduction in travel time and expenses.”

Having unified communications can also save time in other clinical settings. Rather than having a radiologist on call travel from home for a consultation, MOSS and OCS make it possible for a doctor to see if the radiologist is available and to send them an MRI or other image electronically.

Overall, NHS staff can be more mobile using MOSS. “Each time someone signs into a computer they can be contacted – whether they’re at a different hospital or working remotely,” says Mr Uttley. “That’s a really big opportunity for improvement. The notion of an extension number could be a thing of the past.”

Indeed, staff could potentially connect to the unified communications platform using a Windows Mobile Device over a WiFi connection, and use applications such as instant messaging to keep in touch with colleagues. Staff working in the community could use this kind of technology to reduce the amount of time spent in the office, and increase time spent with patients.

Better value, better patient care

The new platform should deliver significant productivity and cost improvements, says Ann Becke, non-executive director of Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Early analysis suggests the new voice/data platform will reduce calling costs by 70 per cent, and reduce other expenses such as travel claims and car parking costs.

“The hospital will certainly see significant improvements in working practices from MOSS and OCS. We want staff to be enabled by the power that good IT solutions bring - and not hampered by systems that just make life harder,” she says.