Healthcare

A long history of care

Barts Health NHS Trust is one of the largest and oldest NHS trusts in the United Kingdom. It has a proud history of education and service, including St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which has provided continuous patient care for more than 900 years.

As healthcare becomes increasingly digital, the Trust faced aging systems that created siloed and fragmented patient information, making communication among specialists, hospitals, and patients more difficult. With the world becoming more connected, Barts leadership knew that to provide the best possible care to patients, a big change was required. The way information was managed needed to be addressed.

“Driving the Trust forward with innovation and technology is a massive priority," says Sarah Jensen, chief information officer at Barts Health NHS Trust. "We want to gain efficiencies, remove duplication, and increase safety, as well as allow patients to have information at their fingertips. Technology can also be a time-saver. Every minute matters, especially with the number of patients we see and the geography we cover.”

The size and scale of operations at Barts made its digital transformation more complex because each hospital had its own system that was not necessarily compatible with others. This challenge required planning, building, and streamlining a network that would work for the entire group of hospitals and ensure that patients' electronic records were always available, regardless of which specialist they saw. The Trust needed a solution that would ensure that, in a technological as well as physical sense, the doctor and the patient were always in the same place at the same time.

Improving service, security, and the staff experience 

Working with Cisco and implementation partner, Block, Barts' IT teams created a single, secure environment that provides a safe space for easy collaboration, streamlines and improves patient care, and establishes a blueprint for future growth. The transformation included a fully resilient network with Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly Cisco DNA Center) and Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) servers in place. This was followed by a wireless migration, elevating security standards and introducing posture checking. This step-by-step process started with Cisco Software-Defined Access (SDA), with more features gradually added.

The upgrade to the core infrastructure marked a significant milestone in Barts' operational resilience. It brought the Trust in line with INFRAM 6, a framework developed by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society to assess the level of infrastructure maturity in healthcare organizations.

Dealing with large networks and numerous endpoints demands a robust infrastructure, and for Barts, Cisco was the only choice. "The installation and migration process, spanning all our sites was nothing short of exceptional," comments Ian Lyon, ICT network and security manager at Barts Health NHS Trust.

“We successfully transitioned from outdated and inferior equipment to cutting-edge technology that is now fit for purpose.”

Setting up a new environment gives Barts increased visibility of systems and data, allowing teams to gather more information around usage and availability, and be proactive. "We don't have to wait for a staff member to phone and tell us about a problem because we're able to see it for ourselves sooner," comments Fay Stevenson, information and communications technology (ICT) director at Barts Health Trust. "We are able to get ahead of the curve and address these problems before they become a serious issue. The next step is preventing some of these issues from happening in the first place."

This will only expand with Cisco ThousandEyes, which provides deep visibility into digital experiences for users and offers real-time monitoring, analytics, and insights. With Cisco ThousandEyes, Barts teams can mimic users and view how applications are running at each site, gathering data and understanding problems from a technical perspective as opposed to relying on users describing them over the phone. Data is separated into layers—network, device, system, and connectivity—for teams to work on behind the scenes and speed up the process of diagnosing issues and finding solutions.

Creating a new environment for extremely sensitive data also means protecting against breaches and promoting security. Barts implemented TrustSec, logically segmented the network, and profiled all devices, providing a more holistic view. Overall, the introduction of posture checking and the tightening of controls to identify outdated or misconfigured devices has significantly enhanced the security of Barts' network. Now, the Trust is considering implementing SD-WAN for all its remote sites.

Making data more available to staff and patients

The evolution of the network architecture at Barts has been nothing short of astonishing. The network's stability and reliability are elevated, and instead of dealing with outages, IT teams can focus on optimizations because now, any complaints are about performance rather than disruption. Perhaps most importantly, wireless network upgrades no longer disrupt operations, allowing users to continue working seamlessly and contribute to the Trust's core objective: improving patient care.

The impact on nurses, doctors, ward staff, and patients is clearly visible. Clinicians have access to comprehensive patient information at the tip of their fingers. Before, data and patient charts were spread out through various departments or systems, sometimes in paper formats. Now, information is kept digitally in one place. For example, doctors or paramedics attending an accident site can input information about the patient into the system on route to the hospital, so that treatment can start sooner.

"Today, clinical records are available digitally at thousands of terminals in the Trust," says Michael Moeller, director of nursing at Barts Health NHS Trust. "Senior consultants can make some clinical decisions away from the patient's bedside without the need to search for their physical charts, which allows for timelier and more responsive changes to care plans, rendering the work of clinical teams more productive and efficient." This ease of information also enables a more participatory type of healthcare between clinicians and patients. Barts shares scheduling, discharge summaries, letters, and other data with patients and their primary doctors online.

Barts now has the foundation for further growth and improvements, including AI use and machine learning. Expanding on the enhanced wireless coverage achieved across the new network, Barts will be able to delve into implementing Bluetooth location tracking throughout its hospitals. Its robust wireless network now has the strength to support such advanced functionalities.