Gloucestershire trust responds to COVID-19 with Citrix
Hospital enables 2,000 employees to work from home and maintain continuity of services within 48 hours
When government mandates forced Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust to move staff and patient clinics off the main hospital site, it moved quickly to enable 2,000 employees to work from home and continue providing essential services.
And, with the help of Citrix Systems, the trust was up and running in less than two days.
Citrix enabled us to respond extremely quickly to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, and to continue business as usual without any negative impact on patient services
“We had to move all our staff out and rapidly transition as many services as we could to remote delivery,” said Mark Hutchinson, executive chief digital information officer at the trust.
“But that’s easier said than done.”
Panic buying
Many hospitals in the same situation rushed to buy hundreds of laptops to support their teams.
But Gloucester went a different route.
“We didn’t want to just buy hundreds of expensive laptops that we’d have to set up, distribute out to staff who need them most, and then have the challenge of counting them all back in,” Hutchinson said.
“But we also knew that individual PCs in people’s homes can be difficult to secure and manage, which is critical when we’re working with confidential patient data.”
A secure, reliable alternative
The trust chose instead to work with Citrix Gold Solution Advisor, LIMA, to implement Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and provide secure, reliable access to the clinical apps and information employees would need to do their jobs from home using personal devices.
“We basically said if you have a device, we'll sort the virtual desktop infrastructure, and we’ll make sure you can easily access all the trust systems, securely,” Hutchinson said.
Game-changing results
All the trust’s support and patient administration services now operate remotely through a virtual desktop on the devices of their choice – from Macs to PCs. In addition, we have senior clinicians at home, self isolating, who can still be online, securely accessing their patients’ records to monitor their progress and it’s been a game-changer for them,” Hutchinson said.
And it was all accomplished in a matter of days.
“Citrix enabled us to respond extremely quickly to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, and to continue business as usual without any negative impact on patient services,” Hutchinson said.
“We’re not scared to say Citrix made all the difference. We couldn’t have moved this quickly without it.”
