United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has invested over £1 million in a new data centre as part of its ‘Going Digital’ journey.
The new data centre will store its digital information and form the foundation for the trust to invest in a new electronic prescribing and medicines administration system, electronic patient records and other digital projects.
It’s said to provide the capacity to support at least 300 virtual servers, and provide one petabyte (equivalent to 500 billion of pages of standard text) of fast storage and two petabytes of backup storage.
The project involved 33.6 miles of fibre cabling being installed – which involved 3,360 person hours, the introduction of a ‘hot aisle’ air conditioning system, and the expertise from 20 contractors. The trust also added, “200 amps of power along with a backup generator and an uninterruptible power supply that can last 40 minutes without any other support.”
Paul Matthew, Director of Finance and Digital, said: “Members of our Digital Services Team, supported by other colleagues, have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to create this new state-of-the-art hub that will benefit patients and almost every single colleague across the trust.
“As we continue our ‘Going Digital’ journey, it is essential that we have the best systems in place to support all of the hard work that is going on across the trust. It is not only about having a new data centre to support our existing infrastructure, but also making sure that we have the capacity in the future and that every possible safety measure is in place so that it is as resilient as it can possibly be.”
In September 2021, HTN interviewed Andrew Morgan, CEO, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, where we discussed the trust’s focus on people first, when it comes to digital innovation.
