Member Article

Lincolnshire hospice taken into the cloud

North East-based Cloud Computing experts Knowledge I.T have recently completed a £100,000 project to update St Barnabas Lincolnshire Hospice’s information technology infrastructure. The project was split into two phases that involved; firstly updating and streamlining their wide area network (WAN) then secondly, moving software applications and data into ‘The Cloud’.

St Barnabas Hospice Trust was formed in 1982 and has since grown into an organisation with over 300 staff and 1000 volunteers providing services from 10 sites across the UK. As the business has grown, so have the requirements placed upon their ICT systems. Over the past few years, increasingly stringent security requirements have meant that workers needing to connect to the NHS N3 network and SystmOne patient-record resource had to go through a time-consuming log-on process. These systems were accessed with special security dongles, via their Internet-based public network. This was a laborious and latency-ridden process, which led to frustrations for the staff. As such there was a need to review the systems and streamline the data delivery mechanism.

The decision to bring Knowledge I.T on-board as primary technical consultant for the project was made due to their expertise in Cloud Computing, Virtualisation, Data Centre Services, and an ability to deliver end-to-end technology services. The new infrastructure is now run on dedicated fibre connections to their own Virtual Private Network, which is built around Knowledge I.T’s ISO 27001 Data Centre network, resulting in safe and secure data storage. Applications and data are also now delivered dynamically via The Cloud, and offer a much more positive end user experience.

Account Manager David Bennett explains: “The new system is much easier to manage for St Barnabas, with the vast majority of infrastructure being proactively managed by Knowledge I.T. This allows St Barnabas to fully focus on their core business; Healthcare. We often go into organisations where the staff just want to be able to access systems without fighting with technology, and this Cloud-based solution, based upon a private network, isideal.”

Darren Holmes, I.T Manager from St. Barnabas concludes: “As well as offering a much better user-experience, the new set-up allows staff to work remotely. This increased flexibility really aids our business without compromising security. It is the hoped that in the future; all data and applications will be delivered via thin-client terminals, which are a lot cheaper than regular PC’s. On-going changes in the NHS set-up, means that a hospice such as ours, is fully responsible for managing and developing our own technology infrastructures. The key to this project was to implement a solution which was flexible, to grow with our organisation and accommodate future changes, being in ‘The Cloud’ really aids all that”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Knowledge I.T .