NHS Education for Scotland goes 'cloud first' with ServiceNow and Fruition Partners

'Our plan is to create a unified platform across all our IT systems which delivers a consistent, easy-to-use, consumerised experience, says NES's Christopher Wroath

NHS Education for Scotland (NES), the education training body for NHS Scotland, has selected Fruition Partners and ServiceNow to provide cloud-based digital services.

The cloud project will be based around ServiceNow's automated services software which will be used to manage HR, facilities and IT in addition to supporting the education and training facilities delivered by NES.

Once completed, it is expected the rollout will deliver efficiency improvements across NHS Training For Scotland.

NES selected Fruition Partners UK to deliver the ServiceNow cloud solution through the government's G-Cloud supplier framework. The initial rollout of the ServiceNow technology was completed in just 30 days and lines up with the UK government's "digital by default" and "cloud-first" initiatives.

"The NES board has set an ambitious goal to create a single cloud-based platform for digital service delivery by August 2016," said NES interim director of digital transformation Christopher Wroath, speaking about the project.

"This project is being supported by Fruition Partners and ServiceNow and forms a core plank of this strategy. It also meets the UK government's 'cloud-first' goal to encourage wider adoption of the cloud across the public sector," he continued.

"Our plan is to create a unified platform across all our IT systems which delivers a consistent, easy-to-use, 'consumerised' experience. We have delivered this initially with IT support, based on the ServiceNow platform, and we will soon be extending it to a wide range of other digital services," Wroath added.

The core of the rollout is based on a ServiceNow self-service portal which speeds up employees' access to common requests such as having computer problems fixed. It also grants NES staff access to training management materials and systems, underlying the organisation's aim of providing the best healthcare training possible.

NES is already working on the next phase of the development for the cloud project and the organisation aims to extend it to other IT functions.

Paul Cash, managing director of Fruition Partners UK, welcomed the results of the partnership with NES and ServiceNow.

"The rapid rollout of the first phase of this project demonstrates the commitment of the NES team to creating a unified digital platform, and we are delighted that by being able to share Fruition's prior experience of ServiceNow projects in the public sector we were able to support NES's ambitious goals," he said.

NHS Education for Scotland is far from the only NHS body to have benefited from the deployment of cloud-based services. Camden and Islington NHS Trust recently deployed the Carenotes Electronic Patient Record system (EPR) from Advanced Health & Care in an effort to improve patient care in its mental health services.

The "cloud-first" mentality is shared by Netflix director of technology Ashley Sprague, who previously told Computing how a ServiceNow deployment has brought benefits to the online streaming service.