Contract shows healthcare IT market is opening up
NHS trust uses independent Midlands firm to enhance iPad use among managers
With fresh opportunities in the healthcare IT market following the death of the restrictive NHS National Programme for IT, smaller independent firms are finally getting a foot in the door.
Midlands-based Micro-Business Maintenance has provided a technical solution that will enable staff at South Staffordshire & Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to use the GoodReader application on their iPads.
The application means users can read and annotate PDFs together with other document formats.
The contract follows a decision by the trust to provide executive and non-executive directors with iPads. A significant cost saving from the move has been the reduction in both time and printing costs as senior staff are now able to make use of digital copies of papers, automatically synchronised with content on the user’s iPad while in meetings.
The solution meets the stringent NHS data security requirements, being encrypted to a high level and located within England, but still enable the upload of data by administrative staff from within the secure NHS network.
Jason Timmins, technical director, said: “We provided a test environment at no initial cost to establish if the trust’s requirements could be met and ultimately we provided a solution that worked. After successful testing, the iPads are now being configured by the trust to enable this secure data synchronisation.”
Pete Kendal, head of IM&T development at the trust, added: “Micro-Business Maintenance provided a good, inexpensive solution and was responsive to our needs.”
- Companies:
- South Staffordshire and Shropshire NHS Foundation Trust
- Micro-Business Maintenance
