NHS trust's crack IT squad claims its first digital upgrade hits An NHS trust is claiming the first fruits of success from a new unit created to modernize its dated IT infrastructure. The Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust created an IT solutions unit of 12 new and existing staff to modernize its infrastructure in February 2014. The unit has been handling IT change requests across 5, …
I'm sure that the target to be paperless will be met early, the disparate systems will work together beautifully as planned, NHS employees' lives and jobs will be made much easier, and that it won't be an utter, utter fuckup.
At least that's what we'll be told. Reminds me of this old joke for some reason, can't for the life of me think why...
And the Workers spoke amongst themselves, saying "It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."
And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth, "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying one to another, "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them, "It promotes growth and is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went unto the head of IT solutions and sayeth unto her, "This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of this Department."
And the head of IT solutions sayeth unto the press, "It will provide value for money, be fit for purpose and be secure and work with the Trust's other systems."
errr. What's the story here... Created a team of 12 people, designed something on paper, virtualised some servers (whoa cutting edge!!!!!!!) and upgraded all laptops to windows 7 and bought some open source software that is still yet to be used. Is this news, cause if the ex-ibm EPR does, she needs to get a real job
I believe this is the incredible IT team who had to suffer that awful period when 2e2, their outsourced IT provider, collapsed a couple of years back. The new team restructured their department and service in such a manner that they could foster creativity and innovation. Part of that process led to a strategy of outsourcing only the 'commoditised' service elements and also spreading their risk across a number of suppliers.
I have it on good authority that they directly saved £4.5m of tax payers' money in the process, compared to the original deal and associated business case. I'm also led to believe their containment demonstrated many £m of cost avoidance while dealing with this fall out.
During all this the team managed to keep the wheels on with their IT transformation programme, migrating 147 servers and multiple applications to new data centres (their critical clinical applications have been running 100% without downtime since, for the past 18 months). In addition to upgrading their WAN/LAN they also provided wireless to their 150+ buildings across three counties, making the workforce truly mobile and with obvious implications on estate and paper efficiencies.
They appear to have been running with around 32 key projects within their massive IT transformation programme and I personally take my hat off to them. I've been doing NHS IT for eleven years now and I know how difficult it can be, having to deal with constant organisational change (politicians' hobby horse) and operate on a shoe string. Most organisations endure one or two major IT projects each year, but these guys are def spinning plates with their EPR rollout, AD migration, email migration, hardware refresh, introducing MDM, Single Sign On, rolling out thousands of smarthphones, iPads, video conferencing, and a host of other IT goodies. These might seem like the norm for many organisations, but they're truly transformational for the NHS.
I've learnt a great deal from this team and will continue to watch them carefully. Well done Sussex Partnership IT Crowd (and congratulations on winning the team award at the recent Positive Practice awards).
I believe this is the incredible IT team
KarlG. First post, registered just to post this.
Entirely coincidentally, there is a Karl Goatley whose LinedIn profile describes him as "Director of IT at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust".
No relation, I'm sure...
Vic.
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