Empowering clinical staff to improve patient care

Organisation

Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust specialises in the health of women and their babies, both within the hospital and out in the community. It’s highly knowledgeable and experienced teams provide maternity care, fertility treatment, gynaecology treatments and the diagnosis and counselling of genetic conditions. The hospital is one of only two such specialist trusts in the UK and the largest women’s hospital of its kind in Europe.

Clinical research is also a major part of the Trust’s work. It allows the Trust to continually improve the healthcare it provides and develop new and improved treatments and medications. Also, as a teaching hospital, it works closely with the University of Liverpool to deliver the highest standards of undergraduate and post-graduate medical education and training.

New vision

Like every hospital, Liverpool Women’s Hospital Foundation Trust is concerned with providing it’s patients with the best possible healthcare, which means pioneering new diagnosis and treatment techniques and adopting the very best working practices. Both place significant extra demands on the network.

When he arrived at Liverpool Women’s Hospital Foundation Trust, Dr Zafar Chaudry, Chief Information Officer, very quickly realised that the network he inherited needed to be replaced. “It just wasn’t adequate for the Trust’s requirements,” he says. “So I wrote a new IT vision and strategy describing the network we needed for the provision of the next generation of hospital care.”

Information at the point of care

Dr Chaudry’s vision was of an intelligent network that would not only adapt to individual’s requirements within the hospital, but would also allow secure remote and wireless access.

“Every clinical device, from a heart rate monitor to an MRI scanner and a microscope, is starting to become a network device,” he says. “We not only have to store the massive amounts of data they generate but, to be effective, we have to deliver the information to the point of care, whether that be a consultant on his rounds or a nurse in the outpatient clinic.”

“We are also increasingly delivering new, leading applications to the bedside,” he continues. “For example, we now use an application that calculates the dosage of prescribed medication in real time, based on a patient’s medical records. It not only improves efficiency, it also significantly reduces the risk of mistakes occurring.”

In addition to handling this explosion in data, hospital networks are increasingly called upon to handle voice and video traffic, which puts further pressure on bandwidth. And, of course, with sensitive data patient being accessed all the time, the very best security is absolutely paramount.

Right technology and design

Dr Chaudry’s first step was to scour the market for the technology that would deliver his vision. After carefully assessing what was available he chose Juniper Networks’ solutions.

“It was very important that we got the right technology for what we were trying to achieve,” Dr Chaudry says. “Juniper’s solutions provided us with a lot of benefits, including high throughput, greater resilience, easier management, higher security and lower costs.”

To help Dr Chaudry with the network design and implementation, Juniper suggested Scalable, an IP networking and security specialist and Juniper Elite Partner. Its consultants worked closely with Dr Chaudry to understand his requirements and design a network that would help him achieve his vision.

“Scalable performed a needs analysis for us,” explains Dr Chaudry. “Its consultants then took that away and architected what they thought our network should look like based on Juniper’s technologies. I was impressed, because they were able to translate my business needs, my cost pressures, my requirements into a very simple architecture for my new network topology.”

Simple and secure

The solution Scalable recommended and implemented is an end-to-end 10Gb network that makes use of Juniper’s virtual chassis technology. Using this technology the network aggregation layer is eliminated, which does away with bottlenecks and decreases latency dramatically.

The solution also simplifies management, as multiple Juniper switches can be managed as a single logical device. In addition, to deliver the security demanded by NHS Trusts and allow anytime, anywhere access, Scalable recommended Juniper’s modular security platform. Instead of needing two networks to separate patient and staff services, the Juniper technology allows the Trust to have one, secure, converged network that supports both.

Commenting on the implementation Dr Chaudry says: “Scalable delivered the network project on time and budget and, above all, gave me the assurance that it was done right”.

Improving patient care

The Trust now has a high performance network that is helping to improve patient care. “Midwives can now access real-time patient data remotely to provide high quality care in the community while reducing time spent updating records back at the hospital,” says Dr Chaudry. “We estimate that staff productivity has increased two-fold through instant, secure remote access to critical applications.”

“Remote access to patient records is fully compliant with national data protection legislation and protection,” continues Dr Chaudry. “Controlled access to digital images through the NHS’s Picture Archiving and Communications system is also providing faster and improved diagnosis for doctors and other healthcare professionals. In addition, we believe we’ve reduced operational costs by 10%, through simplifying our infrastructure.”

Because Scalable manage and support the network on the Trust’s behalf Dr Chaudry has seen benefits in the IT area too. “We’re not in the business of network support,” he says. “By allowing Scalable to manage our network we don’t have to worry about acquiring and retaining scarce networking skills. Plus I know exactly what my costs are going to be. The cost of ownership is entirely predictable.”

Dr Chaudry is not only pleased with the managed service arrangement, he is also impressed with the support he receives. “Scalable’s support is excellent,” he says. “Its engineers are constantly monitoring our network and, more often than not, they call us to say a problem has been resolved before we even know we have one.”

“There is a whole generation of younger doctors coming through who are used to being connected all the time,” Dr Chaudry continues. “Our new network, provided by Scalable and Juniper, allows us to make that a reality in their job and, as a result, empowers them to make faster decisions and improve patient care.”