As part of a five-year deal worth £2 million, the project will enable hospital employees to find new ways of working, including mobile and flexible work options and wider inter-departmental collaboration that will drive faster and better decision-making. The pilot will be fully deployed by the end of 2014.
Unify will provide a complete OpenScape suite of Voice, UC and Wireless Mobility products as well as 6,300 extensions for IP-based SIP telephones for clinical and administrative staff across the site. Experts will also provide full user training, while its technical support team will ensure all products’ software assurance and system updates throughout the agreement.
Unify won the project after a competitive tender process through the Public Services Network (PSN) Framework and was awarded Lot 1 Voice. The PSN defines common standards for equipment, software and service operation for public and third sector communications infrastructure programmes.
Will Smart, Director of Information Management and Technology at the Royal Free London NHS Hospital Trust, says: “We’re committed to maintaining the best possible patient outcomes and Unify’s OpenScape portfolio will help us to ensure that we can deliver responsive, location-independent care for our patients.”
Smart highlights the new set-up’s flexible working options: “The OpenScape platform, used in a virtualised environment, will enable our doctors and support teams to better respond to patients’ needs and make decisions faster. This investment in cutting edge communications and full user training will enable our employees to get much more every day from the applications and record systems that they run.”
Trevor Connell Managing Director West Region EMEA at Unify comments: “The OpenScape UC platform will provide simpler and more convenient access to key Trust staff across different sites. The system will be fully scalable to the Trust’s changing needs, whether heavily-used services like A&E or new hospital facilities. It will greatly reduce the Trust’s fixed and variable costs as well as system maintenance needs.
“This contract further demonstrates Unify’s ability to win and manage campus-wide UC programmes in healthcare that demand very high system performance and complete scalability across different virtual, managed or on-premise ICT environments.”