GOSH

Overview

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is one of the most famous hospitals in the UK and is considered to be one of the top five children’s hospitals in the world.

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In 2017 GOSH wanted to implement a solution that would allow everyone involved in a patient’s care to have instant access to all of their records, whether in hospital, in a community clinic, or at home. To enable this they embarked on an ambitious programme to introduce a leading electronic patient records system.

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The new solution would transform the way healthcare professionals worked, replacing their ageing IT systems and paper records with state-of-the-art digital applications accessible via an internet connection.

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To enable fast and reliable access to the new system throughout the campus, GOSH asked Installation Technology, as it’s trusted incumbent service provider, to upgrade their fixed and wireless LAN infrastructure to provide ubiquitous connectivity across all 14 buildings on site.

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Approach

Installation Technology has been working in the Healthcare sector for over 20 years and appreciate how challenging hospital environments are to work in. They operate 365 days per year, 24 hours a day, have high standards of hygiene and strict Health and Safety practices.

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Theatres and ward environments are extremely complex, installation of new cabling and equipment requires careful navigation around medical apparatus and services such as gas, air and alarms.

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Having installed much of GOSH’s IT infrastructure since 2013, Installation Technology were ideally placed to deliver the enabling infrastructure for this exciting initiative.

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To appropriately manage these risks and maximise the efficiency of the delivery programme, a comprehensive Project Implementation Plan (PIP) was co-created with GOSH’s IT dept and managed by our PRINCE2 accredited project manager.

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Solution

We collaborated closely with GOSH and their 3rd party suppliers to create a fixed and wireless network infrastructure that would serve the needs of the new patience record solution, whilst future proofing to maximise their investment.

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When planning the equipment layout design, we worked rigorously to strike the right balance between ease of installation and future maintenance access, with system performance, coverage and cost.

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In total we installed, tested and commissioned:

• 1,251 Wireless Access Points

• 47 kms of Cat 6a cabling

• New networking equipment within 91 Comms rooms and 3 Data Centres onsite.

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Our project manager closely managed the PIP throughout the 12 month programme, to deliver the solution with no unplanned disruptions to staff, patients or visitors.

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Our Project Plan was underpinned with robust governance to keep all stakeholders informed, with no surprises and included:

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• Daily engineering shift reporting to the project

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• Weekly meetings with GOSH’s ICT Director and IT

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• Weekly meetings with 3rd parties involved with the programme

• A comprehensive monthly report circulated to all stakeholders, including GOSH directors and assistant directors.

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Our work was installed in line with industry best practice and complied with all appropriate healthcare and site-specific standards with no Health and Safety incidents reported.