University College Hospital overhauls communications

Staff will use voice over IP phones

University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust has signed a £10m seven-year contract with Azzurri Communications to upgrade all its communications to voice over IP.

UCLH hopes the deal will save £1.7m over the lifespan of the contract and will replace an ageing communications infrastructure. Azzuri will manage all fixed-line and mobile communications – including pagers, bleepers and BlackBerry devices - across six hospital sites.

"From fixed line extensions to BlackBerry devices, pagers for on-call remote staff and bleepers for medical consultants, downtime is not an option, but neither are spiralling costs," said James Thomas, IT director at UCLH.

"When it was time to update our ageing and disparate communications infrastructure, we looked to consolidate our spend while leveraging an improved service with greater cost savings.”

The deal followed a successful installation of an IP telephony service at UCLH's flagship University College Hospital.

The service will be supported by seven permanent on-site Azzurri engineers and a 24-hour helpdesk.

“We now have the benefit of fixed pricing and uncapped usage, without the extensive management overheads," said Thomas.