NHS Oldham cuts power and carbon costs

Oldham Integrated Care Centre

NHS Oldham has announced that it expects to save £41,000 from its annual energy costs thanks to energy efficient IT solutions installed at its flagship integrated care centre.

The centre, thought to be the largest health centre in the UK, covers nine floors and includes five GP practices, dentists, outpatient services, minor surgery, an urgent care centre, audiology, therapy services and children’s and older people’s services.

The PCT said the integrated care centre was designed with the help of its IT services partner Computacenter, which designed and deployed the network linking all the staff working in the building.

Computacenter also configured and installed 350 new desktops and with partner 1E implemented 1E’s Power and Patch Management Pack, a combination of power management solution NightWatchman and Wake-on-LAN availability management solution WakeUp.

The PCT said the systems will enforce the shutdown of desktop computers and enhance the management and distribution of operating system patches, reducing energy costs by £41,000 in the first year and decreasing the trust’s carbon footprint.

Stephen Sutcliffe, a director at NHS Oldham, said the PCT planned to roll-out the energy efficient solutions used in the integrated centre across the trust’s estate.

Sutcliffe told EHI Primary Care that the network installed at the integrated care centre meant the centre and the PCT headquarters had now become the major hubs for the trust which covers 227,000 people.

He said that the PCT’s next step would be to link the network with the local authority, which had its headquarters across the road from the integrated care centre.

The trust said Computacenter was also deploying Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager to help it to better manage NHS Oldham’s ICT estate, enabling Computacenter to maintain a standard user operating system and deliver desktop software in a more cost-effective manner.

Chris Price, public sector director at Computacenter , said cutting costs and increasing time spent with patients were challenges all PCTs and that IT could be used to meet those challenges.

He added: “The new Oldham Integrated Care Centre is a great example of this – it has been set up with technology at the core to drive efficient working practices, which in turn enables healthcare workers to dedicate more resource to serving the community.”