South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust is switching to a digital patient records system, which will be powered by a fibre optic network from Virgin Media Business.
The network is aimed at offering digital communications resources to other NHS organisations and help drive additional investment, the Trust said.
Patient records from across the organisation are now held centrally and are accessible on demand, wherever a healthcare worker logs on.
The new network costs the same to operate as the previous one but has lower management overheads.
It has helped reduce the number of sites that the Trust operate, and will save both time and money by enabling more than 5,000 staff to use video and phone conferencing to communicate with colleagues and peers rather than travelling to meetings, said the Trust.
The new network connects over 80 sites to the computing hub in Beckenham, south London at speeds ranging from 10 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) to 1 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps).
Working with Virgin Media Business has enabled SLaM to introduce a fully-digital patient records system in which paper documents are scanned and filed electronically, then made available on-demand to authorised users.
SLaM is now offering use of the network to their partner NHS organisations around the UK, and is aiming to join the Public Sector Network initiative to enable it to reduce costs through the use of shared infrastructure. Both are seen by the Trust as important financial measures that will assist in meeting patient care obligations while reducing overall costs.
SLaM deputy director of ICT and business development Ricky Mackennon said the "insourcing" is an exciting new approach that can help to both modernise service provision and spend less in doing so.
He said, "Having a single IP-based network has reduced our running costs and those efficiency savings go right through to the bottom line of the business."
"By moving from an MPLS network to an Ethernet VPN service from Virgin Media Business we’ve been able to bring our phone, internet and data services together and offer use of what’s a really powerful infrastructure to others in the shape of cloud computing-based services."
Virgin Media Business head of health and emergency services David Astley said, "We’ve been able to help SLaM to reduce spending on telecoms and travel, with the potential to create new sources of income."
"This is a really innovative model for how a healthcare organisation can modernise, increase efficiency and save money in one move," he added.
