Another year of delivering service excellence

The Health Informatics Service (THIS) has a record of delivering service excellence across an extensive range of products and services predominantly delivered to other NHS organisations and the related public sector market throughout the UK. This was achieved throughout 2017/18 with huge success, despite substantial change across the local health economy and the wider West Yorkshire and Harrogate Sustainability and Transformational Partnership (STP).
Whilst colleagues in our Information, Corporate and Operational teams were supporting the go-live of the Cerner Millennium Electronic Patient Record (EPR), the Service Delivery Team ensured the rest of the business was maintained. The team continued to deliver service excellence in supporting our customer base by adapting both flexibly and in a timely manner to their changing requirements.
The Service Account Managers have a strategic relationship with the account(s) they manage to ensure that the products and services delivered by THIS fully meet all existing and future IM&T requirements whilst ensuring economies of scale are realised and IM&T costs are rationalised.
During 2017/18 the team worked with THIS Service Managers and teams to deliver a number of high profile projects and programmes of work. This included supporting the project of transferring all related IT support services at HMP Kirkham, HMP Lancaster Farms and HMP Preston. THIS provided project management, full network design, IT equipment refresh, creation of all required accounts, data transfer, changes to registration authority support and provision of onsite support. Each cutover was planned with minimal disruption to the healthcare provision provided in the prisons and within the agreed timescales.
One of NHS Digital’s initiatives across England was to provide free Wi-Fi to patients and support health care professionals to enable access to services, tools and technologies, which would allow the delivery of better patient care. THIS worked closely with the CCGís and GP Practices and was able to deploy a GP Wi-Fi solution to 160 practices under extremely tight timescales.
Other pieces of work the Service Delivery Team were involved with during 2017/18 included:
- Worked with our local partners and customers by supporting the collaborative approach to digital transformation in the region through the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT).
- Contracted with a number of new National Pathology Exchange (NPEx) sites with expansion into non-NHS organisations.
- Started the planning process of migrating all of our customerís current Transition (N3) Network links to the new Health and Social Care Network (HSCN).
- Commenced work on exciting collaborations with BMC Software Ltd and Qlik IT.
- Represented THIS at a number of events, including the Informatics Skills Development Network (ISDN), locally and in the North West.
The Service Account Managers will continue to build upon their existing strong relationships with customers and collaboration through partnerships to ensure that their needs are met and aligned to their local and national priorities.
2018/19 will be an exciting, yet challenging year and undoubtedly one of immense change — The Service Delivery Team are very much looking forward to the challenges and are ready to embrace them.
Published by Chris Dunne (Assistant Director of Informatics) on 31.08.2018
This story first appeared in our 18th Issue of THIS is the News newsletter.

