This is a guest post by Lorna Crawford, Technical Pre-sales Engineer
‘I was feeling really worried. we were looking at what was going on in Italy, how the health service there was overwhelmed, I could see the numbers rising in the UK and I realized that we were going to have to come up with some new innovative solutions to enable patient care to continue to take place in the UK NHS.’
When I watched Ian Wakeford, Head of Leicestershire Health Informatics Service, on television, relive his experience of the start of the pandemic, it brought back the fear of the unknown we all felt, and the urgent need to adopt a new way of life.
Ian had a difficult task ahead, to enable NHS key workers to work from home.
Sounds simple?
The Challenges
Firstly, working from home meant not having access to desktop computers on the NHS premise. Secondly, as the pandemic hit, there was a global shortage of laptops and desktops for purchase. The third challenge, the NHS relies on a lot of legacy applications, such as patient records, graphic intensive x-ray or MRI images and lab results applications, that require specific operating systems on which to run. Furthermore, a distributed workforce meant that getting round every person individually to meet their IT needs, was impossible.
The Solution
Ian worked with a company called Orange Business Services to build a centralised ‘Virtual Desktop’ system, in record time.
A process which normally takes 3 – 6 months was delivered in just 2 weeks!
This meant every NHS worker could securely access their NHS desktop over the internet, via their own personal device if needed, no matter the operating system and still get access to patient data and all their usual applications. A real hit with consultants and key NHS workers.
For security they used Multifactor authentication via their mobile phones and a simple self- enrolment process was a success for the majority of users.
Secret of Success!
The only way to achieve this speed of delivery is by automating every step and accelerating the testing of the platform to ensure it would work.
Login VSI’s automated testing solution (Login Enterprise), validated the Orange Business Services platform and significantly reduced the risk of failure.
Login Enterprise tested:
- The scalability of the solution to ensure every single key NHS worker can access the tools they need, when they need them.
- The application compatibility with the environment to ensure each application works as it should, after every change.
- The continued availability and performance of all the applications that each NHS worker requires, to deliver the best level of patient care possible.
If you would like to hear more about the solution behind the success, get in touch: https://www.loginvsi.com/contact
Or, to get started with Login Enterprise, download a free trial today: https://www.loginvsi.com/downloads/login-enterprise
Thanks go to the UK Citrix User Group for the opportunity to come and share this success story in their Winter meetup.
Merry Christmas all, stay safe!
