Unity is strength: how unified communications technologies can bring NHS staff together
Microsoft’s vision for unified communications is to give people the ability to access all the information and messages they need to receive from any device they choose to use, from wherever they happen to be. This could deliver huge benefits to the NHS; making it easier for people to contact each other and to make key decisions.
On any given day, an NHS worker might need to use their office phone, a mobile phone or their desktop PC to communicate with colleagues. Increasingly, healthcare workers are also relying on newer communication devices and technologies, from instant messaging to laptop computers.
The challenge facing the health service is how to make this communication secure and effective, says Nick Umney, a technical strategist with Microsoft UK’s public sector division.
“According to a study that Microsoft carried out with Harris Interactive, the average information worker gets 51 messages in seven different places every single day,” he says. “In a healthcare context, some of those messages could be information that people need to act on immediately, like a change to an appointment, or information about a patient’s treatment. “The key to unified messaging is that you can control the way that you receive communication, so that you can do things effectively.”
“Yet we know that many of those messages are sent to more than one device; or picked up using one device and transferred to another. A Gartner Group study found that 60 per cent of business phone calls go to voicemail, and that more than two thirds of instant messaging (IM) sessions become phone sessions.”
Unified communications: the vision
Microsoft’s vision of unified communications is to give information workers the ability to access all their information and messages from any device, in any location.
Rather than having a mobile and a landline phone number, an email address and countless other ways for colleagues to get in touch, unified communications means having a single identity and using technology to decide the best medium to use at any given time.
“The key to unified messaging is that you can control the way that you receive communication, so that you can do things effectively,” says Mr Umney. “You can specify how you want to be contacted and by whom, say what messages you do and don’t want to receive.”
Exchange and Outlook
One of the key products to enable unified communication is Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook. While Outlook has traditionally held email, calendar and contact information, the latest version of the software also brings together instant message conversations and voicemails into a single, unified inbox. Workers can also opt to import specified web pages using RSS feeds, and information from virtual workspaces – such as those within Microsoft Sharepoint. “A clinician might be working at another site, but if they were using a USB phone plugged into their laptop they would be contactable as usual.”
“The great thing about this technology is that it doesn’t rely on someone being in the office to check their email on a PC,” says Mr Umney. “If they are working at another site or even somebody’s home, they can telephone the Exchange server and it will read out their voicemail and email messages, along with appointment information. If they’re working on a ward, they might prefer to have messages sent as emails to a mobile device.”
Communications Server and instant messaging
The second key technology for unified communications is Microsoft Office Communications Server, which provides enterprise-class IM. While email communication is essentially asynchronous (you send a message, then I reply to that message), instant messaging is a synchronous technology, where both users can send and receive messages simultaneously.
“Instant messaging has been around for a few years, but with Office Communications Server we have moved away from IM being a one-to-one technology,” says Umney. “We now have the ability to have multi-party communication with voice and video, making that communication richer.”
Another new feature of Office Communications Server is the ability to integrate with Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems. Increasingly, NHS trusts are deploying these, so that telephone and data services run on the same network. “Potentially, this technology could make people more available, which is vital when expertise or resources are limited...”
Using Office Communications Server with an IP telephony network makes unified communication potentially more effective in several ways. For example, community healthcare workers could use a software-based telephone on their laptops to keep in touch with the office.
And rather than looking up a colleague’s number in a phone directory, workers could simply type their name into Outlook, and make the call directly from their PC.
“Potentially, this technology could make people more available, which is vital when expertise or resources are limited,” says Mr Umney. “For example, a clinician might be working at another site, but if they were using a USB phone plugged into their laptop they would be contactable as usual.”
Everything is connected
One powerful advantage of unified communications is that it doesn’t rely on someone having access to a PC – and with most NHS staff relying on pagers, mobile phones or other communication devices, this is a critical issue.
“We now have new Ethernet-enabled phones that are intelligent,” says Mr Umney. “You take them home and plug them into a broadband router, and all your calls are automatically routed to that phone. This could potentially make it easier to reach critical staff on call.
“At the same time, it is easy for staff to control which calls get through. So if you are that person on call, you could choose only to be disturbed with emergency calls, for example.”
Time to get practical
A practical example of the way in which unified communications can help the NHS and social services is discharge from hospital. Everybody working with a patient needs to agree a discharge – and this can be a problem in the case of multi-disciplinary teams, who may only meet once a week to discuss cases.
“With unified communications, you could get all the necessary people online on their phone or PC, sharing the most up to date information,” says Mr Umney. “That might well enable them to make a decision there and then.”
Further information about Unified Communications
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Tags: collaboration, communication, email, Exchange, IM, mobile, Nick Umney, Office Communications server, Outlook, RSS, SharePoint, UBHT, Unified Communications