Nottingham hospital signs multimillion-pound network deal

The hospital trust wants to enhance care services

Nottingham University Hospitals Trust has signed a multimillion-pound deal with Cisco to implement a network infrastructure to improve information access and provide patients with better services.

The network will support a range of applications to help enhance the delivery of healthcare services.

One of the main benefits is access to a wireless network providing real-time access to information at the bedside and ensuring that clinicians can be contacted anywhere on site.

The new platform will help to reduce patient waiting times as well as the need for patients to duplicate information by providing access to all relevant data at the point of care, said the trust’s head of service design and innovation, Ian Smith.

“Our network will transform the way we deliver healthcare by enabling us to readily and cost-effectively exploit the capability of new technologies that can genuinely help improve patient care,” said Smith.

“What we are planning is an infrastructure platform where clinicians can access, share and collaborate on healthcare information faster and in a more efficient way,” he said.

“The network will help the trust capture cost efficiencies, increase the co-ordination and integration of care across organisational boundaries, enable greater collaboration of clinical teams and reconfigure service delivery towards more out-patient, day patient and community care.”

The project started in April and the trust hopes to complete it by March 2010.