Dudley expedites shift off XP

Dudley IT Services has undertaken a successul Windows XP to Windows 7 migration for Dudley and Walsall Mental Health NHS Trust; a complex, 22 site organisation – without calling on additional resources.

“The trust had 1,200 seats that were mostly Windows XP, and now it has 1,200 seats that are all Windows 7”, technical architect Nathan Allmont told EHI. “One night they were XP and the next day they were Windows 7. There has been no fall out at all.”

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on 8 April. However, the operating system, which was launched in 2001, was still in widespread use across the public sector, shops and banking.

The NHS was a particularly heavy user; partly because the OS was covered by the Enterprise-wide Agreement between the health service and the company, which was allowed to expire in 2010, and partly because many clinical applications were written for it.

This time last year, EHI Intelligence calculated that approximately 85% of the 800,000 PCs in the NHS were still running XP.

The Crown Commercial Service, which was set up by the Cabinet Office to act as a single, public-sector wide purchasing and commercial operation, negotiated a year-long deal with Microsoft to continue to support XP in the public sector, as long as trusts put “robust” migration plans in place.

Allmont said the mental health trust started working with a Microsoft expert, Richard Danson, two years ago, moving its PCs onto “the highest level of XP available” and creating a more consistent look and feel for its applications.

He said this made the transition to Windows 7 easier, not least because it significantly reduced the amount of training required by trust staff.

Even so, he advised NHS organisations that still need to make the move to start work now. “I would advise people to know where their data is, to plan carefully, and to do a lot of testing,” he said. “It’s got to be done, so the longer you leave it, the worse it will be.”

Dudley IT Services used to be part of its local primary care trust. When the PCTs were dismantled, it became a discrete part of Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust.

It now operates as a self-sufficient organisation, making a profit, not least by running a large, tier-three data centre, which hosts systems for the acute trust, the mental health trust, a commissioning support units, GPs, and software developer Bluespier.

Allmont said the mental health trust decided to move off XP to Windows 7 because it was licensed for it as part of the EwA, and because Microsoft is still working on making the later OS, Windows 8, “more corporate and user friendly.”

He also said other customers of Dudley IT services, including its GPs, are now looking to make the move off XP; but this was a more complicated move, as each practice has its own IT set-up.