University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB) has upgraded its unified communications platform in order to modernise disparate legacy telephony systems, improve resilience and stability, and enhance user experience.
The platform is delivered from the Cinos Cloud with the aim of providing the trust with the “flexibility and robustness” required to adopt new hybrid working practices. The switchboard solution will offer always-on communication and an emergency telephone solution at both of the trust’s acute sites, so that key handsets within the trust can remain operational even in the event of an outage.
The partnership will also see the implementation of a Session Initiation Protocol service, designed to help the trust in accurately forecasting call expenditures and future-proofing telephony infrastructure.
Simon Reynolds, head of voice services at UHDB, called telephony a “key service in an acute clinical environment” that emphasised the need to “future-proof and maintain the viability of stable telephony platform for our service users and our patients… It has become a fundamental need for the trust to provide a standardised platform and a way of seamlessly communicating internally across all sites.”
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton in the spotlight
In June, HTN reported how UHDB went live with electronic system and app Badger Notes with the aim of providing users with “more access to and control” of maternity records during pregnancy; and we reported on the trust’s ‘Paper2Pixels’ event in April, which saw staff helping to identify and streamline more than 1,000 paper-based patient records and forms for the process of digitising.
Last year, we interviewed UHDB’s executive chief digital information officer William Monaghan, hearing about the trust’s approach to “bringing the user and the digital voice together”; digital priorities at the trust such as automation and validation of elective care and work around the federated data platform; and his thoughts on the future of digital within healthcare.
Will also joined HTN for a panel discussion in March this year focusing on the future of the chief information officer role, looking at the role of the CIO at developing digital maturity and skills, across an integrated system, and more.
Telephony and comms: the wider trend
In August, HTN explored an update on the primary care blueprint from NHS Greater Manchester Board, including progress around the adoption of digital telephony in GP practices.
March saw us host a webinar examining the ongoing journey of NHS cloud telephony from transition to transformation.
On communications, last year we highlighted how The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust signed a five-year deal to modernise its communications infrastructure and install hybrid, cloud-based technologies.
