Herefordshire council nets NHS

Herefordshire County Council will extend the use of its regional public sector network to 20 healthcare sites that are currently managed by NHS Herefordshire.

The county was the first in the UK to integrate its council and NHS IT services in 2009.

Last year, it brought the management of the network in-house in order to provide savings and support collaboration between the two sectors.

It currently connects 102 schools, 58 local council corporate sites and 6,000 users.

The shared IT team will continue to be responsible for the management and monitoring of the network.

But a public sector network provider, Updata, will be responsible for the provisioning, rental and management of the circuits that link the end sites to eight exchanges as Points of Presence.

The network will also be extended to 20 healthcare sites, including clinics, community hospitals, mental health outpatient facilities and dental access centres. Overall, it will have more than 2,000 additional healthcare users by the end of March.

All healthcare sites will receive connections of at least 10Mbps with all hospitals and larger sites receiving 100Mbps and a stable network with better network performance.

The network will also provide access to a range of services including IP telephony, files, folders, fast application access, email and later on unified communications and video conferencing.

The organisation estimates that by consolidating healthcare traffic into the community wide network and cancelling contracts to those sites, it will save £130,000 per year for an initial £80,000 spend.

Vic Baldorino, co-founder and executive director of Updata, said: “This project is another great, cost-saving, shared services example.

"Along with significantly lower operational expenditure, the project will ‘keep local traffic local’, deliver better network performance, and enable public sector organisations in the region to work more closely together, with a view to enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.”

The shared IT team believes it will save £1m over three years by managing and monitoring the network in-house.