Case Study

Large Hospital NHS Trust, Manchester

Profile

This case study is based on a real On-Communications customer and real events. Only the identity of the NHS Trust has been disguised.

Serving a population approaching 1 million, Large Hospitals NHS Trust operates several hospital sites across a major metropolitan area. They provide a complete range of district general hospital services.

Challenge

Healthcare providers everywhere have embraced the latest communication technology in order to drive efficiency benefits and improve patient services. A broad range projects from computerised patients records, rapid sharing of images or test results, access to specialised databases as well the day to day running of such a large operation requires a significant communication infrastructure. Throughout the UK this is provided by a dedicated NHS data network.

In addition to the services supported by the NHS network, the Trust also had a requirement to provide a VPN and remote worker solution. This would allow community based healthcare professionals access to the same services, systems and support as their colleagues in the hospitals.

Also recognising the mission critical nature of the services operated and supported across the NHS network, the Trust required a back-up solution to ensure continuity of service in the unlikely event of disruption to the NHS network. Additional internet access capacity for peak periods was also required.

Solution

A technical evaluation was undertaken by the Trust to review potential suppliers and solutions for a high bandwidth internet connection, providing VPN, remote worker capability and back-up to the NHS network. Based on a number of decision making criteria the Trust chose to implement at one of its main hospital sites, a 4Mb symmetrical internet connection from On-Communications.

The connection from On-Communications is delivered by a dedicated wireless link to the hospital site and was implemented in less than 15 days. This provided an advantage in terms of speed of deployment to the trust, a traditional cable provided connection would have typically taken 60 to 90 days to implement.

Because of the requirement to support remote workers it is essential the On-Communications connection is symmetrical, i.e. offers the same high speed for both upload and download. Services that are asymmetrical would support high speed download to the hospital from the remote workers but would restrict the upload from the hospitals to the remote workers.

Result

As well as supporting remote workers and the associated VPN, back-up to the NHS network is provided for all the trusts hospitals by On-Communications connection. This configuration for back-up is very resilient because of the wireless delivery and design of the On-Communications network, which is totally independent of any local underground cables and BT?s infrastructure and exchanges. This means it is totally independent of the NHS network, providing a totally diverse routed back-up solution.

The Trust are using a connection with bandwidth of 4Mb/s, that contracted bandwidth will always available and it is backed by a comprehensive Service Level Agreement. The On-Communications service also provides the flexibility of bursting to higher bandwidths at busy and peak periods. In the case of Trust the connection is configured to support 10Mb/s at busy periods, capacity at 150% of the contracted rate.