While the NHS is one of the UK’s most amazing achievements, it does have its faults. Especially the disjoin between the often-old-school processes within its clinical and operational practices, and the technology we regularly use within our personal lives.
In a nutshell, why is the process to get the medical services a patient needs so lengthy, when sourcing other services and products from other industries is so simple?
Whether down to a lack of budget, technical knowledge, headcount or time – but most likely a combination of all of these factors and more – the biggest blocker that the NHS faces in reinventing the way it interacts with patients and clinicians, is its ability to harness new technology and leverage it as an enabler.
The good news is that this is an issue that can be easily solved by combining the site-specific knowledge within existing NHS Trust IT teams, with the technical expertise of an IT and Telecoms specialist.
Combining IT skills with on-site experience
Outsourcing is a ‘dirty word’ in the NHS, let’s face it.
To service users it conjures the image of profit-driven services and being treated as a statistic, rather than a person. To NHS leaders it presents worries around a loss of control and losing sight of the end-goal; delivering the best possible clinical services to those who need it the most.
But depending on the IT partner you choose to work with, that’s not how it needs to be.
At BDR, we’ve transferred several NHS Trusts’ IT Teams to operate with the BDR family and that small change creates a massive positive impact at all levels of the operation. Most importantly, improving the experience for clinicians, to enable them to reduce costs and offer an improved, more personal level of care. In turn giving service users a better quality of treatment.
Key benefits of working with BDR
- Significant reduction in operating costs
- Access to a broader range of new technologies and services
- Faster deployment and implementation of IT strategies
- Secure and robust cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery solutions
- Innovative app development and customisations
- Leverage automation principles to save time and resources
This strategy is sometimes referred to as TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment), but we think a little differently. Existing IT Teams have a wealth of knowledge around the specific issues each site faces, which can only be gained from years of maintaining and managing the existing systems. And if this knowledge is abandoned or simply ignored, problems multiply.
At the same time, that same IT team spends so much of their time ‘fire-fighting’: putting out the technical fires that require immediate attention – as well as un-productive tasks such as walking the same clinician through the password reset process on a regular basis. This means that they don’t have the time or resources to develop impactful changes to their IT infrastructure.
But don’t just take our word for it. BDR won several coveted industry awards in 2020 for its efforts in assisting NHS Trusts, including the CRN ‘Best Covid-19 Initiative’ Award, and has received heaps of praise from senior management and front-line clinicians alike.
“At a stroke we’ve gone from broken and unreliable legacy IT to a scalable, reliable and fit for purpose solution that supports modern flexible ways of working. In short, a solution provided by BDR and Nutanix which ‘just works’ and which is empowering us to, not just, deliver the healthcare services patients deserve today, while planning for the future with confidence.”
– Gerd Knight, Head of IT, Medway Community Healthcare
By combining the skill pool of a 200-strong team like BDR’s, with an existing IT team, NHS Trusts have access to a much broader range of services and technologies. For example, we’ve developed a cloud-based, automatic clock-in/clock-out system for clinicians from their devices, to reduce admin time and provide the information they need for their daily tasks from a single source.
Plus, the operation can deploy new services far quicker than ever before, leveraging BDR’s on-site engineering team; delivering better services to clinicians and patients faster, within budget and with a greater level of functionality than previously thought.
If you’re looking to bring your Public sector operation firmly into the 21st Century, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we can discuss your needs. We’ll even help you connect with our other NHS clients so you can hear just how much of an impact we’ve been able to make, firsthand.
