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Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP)

Ambulance-Response-Programme-ARP-Establishing-a-world-class-digital-foundation-for-emergency-services-across-the-UK

Establishing a world-class digital foundation for emergency services across the UK

About the ARP

The Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP) delivers mission-critical communication and mobilisation technologies to ensure effective communication between Ambulance Service Trusts, the NHS, and other emergency responders across the UK. 

The Challenge

There are currently two major programmes being implemented by ARP across the UK. The Control Room Solution (CRS), which is utilised by ambulance services across England and Scotland, ensuring critical communications between the emergency control room dispatchers and operational crews are completely seamless. The Mobile Data & Vehicle Solution (MDVS) will replace legacy communications equipment for the English and Welsh Ambulance Service Trusts.

Both programmes required a secure, resilient, and highly available IT infrastructure as the underlying foundation, for which ARP selected Exponential-e as their trusted technology partner. 

The programme has lots of moving parts, and a lot of key users and stakeholders - all with unique needs and ways of working. ARP needed a team, processes, and technologies which could be used to create a common service, capable of integrating with each Ambulance Trust and user organisation.

Mathew Baker, IT Service Manager, ARP

The Solution 

Exponential-e delivered a fully centralised, UK-based service desk, available 24/7, and continues to work with ARP's own teams to identify new opportunities for service improvements and process optimisation.

Over the course of several years, the partnership between ARP and Exponential-e has continued to evolve and is now in a strong position to take on further challenges. A particular focus is the digitisation of processes and onboarding of multiple new solutions to further optimise the availability and delivery of emergency services nationwide.

Solution benefits

  • A 24 / 7, UK-based service desk for all IT-related questions, concerns, and incident management
  • A partnership built on trust, consultation, and service quality, driving ongoing improvements
  • Hands-on engagement and integration with other suppliers  


It's time for the public sector to have its own digital-revolution

The public sector's digital journey is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with leading-edge technology transforming the way critical services are delivered across the country. This exclusive report from Exponential-e explores the challenges and opportunities involved, and explains how public sector organisations can be part of this digital revolution.
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Exponential-e & Solent NHS Trust

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Transforming end user support for more than 4,000 NHS staff

About Solent NHS Trust

Solent NHS Trust offers a growing range of community and mental health services across Southampton, Portsmouth, and parts of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

The Challenge

Having previously outsourced their end user support to the same provider for more than twelve years, Solent made the decision to revamp this entire function, considering ongoing issues around data visibility, unpredictable pricing, and lack of integration between different aspects of the service. The goal for this project would be to deliver seamless IT support services for more than 4,000 end users across Solent's full range of sites, while simultaneously reducing costs and conducting a full device refresh.

It was decided that the new support function would be divided amongst several technology partners, in order to take full advantage of their individual capabilities. Throughout the tender process, Exponential-e's deep commitment to digital transformation in healthcare and willingness to work closely with Solent's own teams to develop a tailored solution in response to the most specific requirements made them a clear stand-out. As a result, they were selected as Solent's sole technology partner for network and end user support.

Solution 

The first areas of the contact went live in December 2022, after several months of close collaboration with Solent's own team to ensure a smooth transition, following the switch-off of the incumbent supplier's services in March of that year. This required a considerable amount of hands-on support, including out of hours, to ensure more than 4,000 staff were able to retain access to the Citrix VPN, avoiding any disruption to day-to-day operations.

As part of a wider hardware refresh, more than 4,000 new laptops were provisioned over the course of ten weeks, replacing much of the legacy technology that was still in use, including across several remote sites. An end user survey was conducted to help maximise adoption and ensure any opportunities for improvement could be identified and acted upon. With more than 2,000 responses, this provided Exponential-e with a rich pool of actionable data with which to design and optimise the new support operation.

Critical to the success of the new support function was the design and implementation of a robust IT Service Management platform, powered by ServiceNow®. By creating a domain separated instance within Exponential-e's managed service offering, Solent would not need to design and deploy the new ITSM platform from scratch, ensuring it would be ready to use on designated go-live date. At the same time, moving the function from CAPEX to OPEX allowed for greater cost control, while minimising the initial expenditure.

In order to meet Solent's specific requirements for their ticketing system, this solution was based on the Exponential-e's defined ITIL-aligned standards and service workflows, with an agreed scope for further customisation and hands-on support from Exponential-e's technical specialists included in the contract. The resulting platform combining the advantages of a proven, well-established solution with the highest levels of control and flexibility in terms of the final implementation and its ongoing development.

Following a successful transition to the new end user support function and the rollout of the ITSM platform, Exponential-e have continued to develop the operation in direct response to Solent's evolving requirements, ensuring business-critical issues can be resolved as quickly as possible. This has included recruiting extra service desk personnel, and implementing out-of-hours cover, while expanding the team's roaming tech hub to ensure all sites are properly supported. Time-to-resolution has been set out in robust SLAs and KPIs, with specific processes and escalations in place to manage high-impact events, and dedicated response engineers in place.

To optimise the efficiency and accessibility of service desk agents, Exponential-e designed and implemented an appointment-based system, ensuring staff who required hands-on IT support could access it as quickly as possible. This has since helped reduced walk-ins for IT-related issues from around 600 per month to less than 30.

The months of work put into establishing this foundation has since allowed Solent and Exponential-e to establish a culture of ongoing improvement, driven by direct collaboration daily, with Exponential-e now established as a trusted partner.

Every point of contact with end user support is tracked and monitored, and end users can provide real-time feedback on their experiences. This has resulted in 75% of tickets logged being resolved at the first point of contact, which, in turn, raised end user support's NPS score from 57, in the first live month of operations, to 90, with a 20% increase in users willing to offer feedback. Since then, the team has built on this success, recently hitting the milestone of more than 5,000 gold ratings.

This partnership continues to evolve, with ongoing collaboration between teams from both organisations ensuring IT can continue to play a key role in delivering world-class service quality to citizens across every region in which Solent is active.

Solution benefits

  • More than 4,000 laptops setup and deployed across multiple sites
  • Access to Citrix VPN delivered for more than 4,000 dispersed staff
  • A highly flexible, fully integrated ITSM platform, with the industry-leading ServiceNow® solution delivered as a managed service
  • Underpinned by Exponential-e's own enterprise-class network
  • 75% of IT support tickets resolved at the first point of contact
  • Walk-ins for IT-related issues reduced from around 600 per month to less than 30, helping reduce waiting times for support services
  • 20-second pickup time regularly beaten by service desk personnel, now averaging 9 seconds wait time per call
  • An increase in average monthly NPS from 57 to 90, with a 20% increase in end-user adoption
  • More than 5,000 gold ratings from end users
  • Network resiliency and stability to critical locations, with full integration into third-party networks, enabling cross-collaboration with partnering NHS trusts across the Integrated Care System in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight 

Exponential-e's support and expertise has transformed the way IT is viewed across our organisation, with staff across all our sites making active use of the available tools and systems in every aspect of their work. The speed with which any issues have been resolved, and the team's willingness to think outside the box – particularly when it came to rolling out the new ITSM platform – have more than fulfilled our initial goals for network and end user support, with ample opportunities for further improvement.

Dawn Day, Head of Digital Delivery, Solent NHS Trust


It's time for the public sector to have its own digital revolution

Technological innovation is transforming the way public sector organisations across the UK engage with citizens and deliver critical services whenever and wherever they are needed. In this exclusive report, we consider the impact of these developments, and explore how organisations can accelerate their own digital journeys, ensuring exceptional citizen outcomes are the norm.
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Bromley Healthcare

Bromley-Healthcare-A-full-stack-deployment-for-a-leading-South-east-London-healthcare-provider-delivers-the-digital-foundation-for-exceptional-patient-care

A full-stack deployment for a leading South-east London healthcare provider delivers the digital foundation for exceptional patient care

About Bromley Healthcare

Bromley Healthcare is a community healthcare provider in South-east London, offering communities across Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich, and Lewisham with a range of world-class services, clinics, and health programmes, while empowering clinicians to deliver the very highest standard of care.

The Challenge

To optimise the availability of its services, enabling clinicians to engage with their patients through an evolving range of channels, Bromley Healthcare has continued to invest in its own network, spanning all its sites across South-east London. However, with its existing infrastructure beginning to show its age and a significant proportion of reported IT issues directly related to network performance, it became clear a new digital foundation was required.

The decision was therefore made to seek out a new strategic partner who would be able to support a full-scale modernisation project, redesigning the entire network from the ground up. Key priorities including the deployment of pervasive wireless connectivity at all sites, for both corporate and guest devices, and optimal resilience, with minimal points of failure.

Far more than just deploying the required connections, this new partnership would involve working closely with Bromley Healthcare's own network team to take full advantage of the latest advances in networking technology, both now and in the long term - to ensure these solutions could be intelligently deployed to support the highest standards of patient care. This would include providing hands-on support to staff and clinicians, ensuring they would be able to make full use of the new infrastructure's capabilities.

Having already engaged with their teams for a number of tactical services over the years, Bromley Healthcare invited Exponential-e to take part in a highly competitive tender process, where candidates were asked to showcase how they would approach solving Bromley Healthcare's unique goals for its network. Keeping an open mind about the proposed solutions, Bromley Healthcare eventually selected Exponential-e as their new strategic partner, based on the overall strength of their offering and willingness to deliver a truly bespoke, full integrated solution.

The Solution 

Working closely with Bromley Healthcare's own IT team, Exponential-e designed and deployed a full-stack Cisco Meraki ecosystem, incorporating SD-WAN, LAN, and Meraki wireless, combined with scalable firewalls, HSCN connectivity, and hosting in world-class data centres - all managed through a single pane of glass.

A key development for Bromley Healthcare's own networking team has been the implementation of application-level monitoring, allowing for full control and visibility of the entire network. This has enabled faster, more effective troubleshooting, ensuring key applications are always available to clinicians, whenever and wherever they are required. At the same time, a dedicated team at Exponential-e continues to maintain the underlying digital foundation, ensuring the network will always deliver the highest standards of performance and guarantee the integrity of critical data.

This blend of centralised control and visibility, expert support, and a fully integrated solution wrap meant that time spent on routine network management was reduced by around 75%, saving an average of 35 internal man hours per week. As a result, Bromley Healthcare's own teams have been able to refocus their attention and prioritise resources to broaden the quality, range, and availability of healthcare services across South-east London.

With the new infrastructure firmly established, Bromley Healthcare are now planning the deployment of a next-gen VPN solution, providing staff and clinicians with additional layers of flexibility in the way they work. Plans are also in place to utilise the system's inherent flexibility to make interpreting services available to clinicians via a range of channels, reducing the need for an interpreter to be physically present when required. 

Solution benefits

  • A full Meraki technology stack, with centralised control and visibility and the ability to connect to the HSCN
  • Resilient, highly secure connectivity for multiple sites across South-east London, enhancing the performance and availability of the platforms clinicians depend on
  • A fully managed service, delivering a robust foundation that frees internal teams to focus on clinician and patients' requirements An average of 35 hours per week saved on routine network management, allowing this time to be reinvested in patient care

You have to have a good network; everything else is built on it. So, it was really important to us to develop a real strategic partnership - not just supplying the lines, but providing suggestions, solutions, and best practice to drive something new and open up opportunities to make our clinicians more efficient and effective.

Patrick Montgomery
Chief Technology Officer, Bromley Healthcare

What I liked, and still like - most about working with the team at Exponential-e was that it was a genuinely two-way conversation. At the outset of this project, we were open to anything, and, put simply, their proposal was the best fit for our networking goals.

Patrick Montgomery
Chief Technology Officer, Bromley Healthcare
The public sector's digital journey is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with leading-edge technology transforming the way critical services are delivered across the country. This exclusive report from Exponential-e explores the challenges and opportunities involved, and explains how public sector organisations can be part of this digital revolution.
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HMPPS

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Powering HMPPS' and NHSE/I's pioneering Telemedicine Expansion Programme

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Leeds Teaching Hospitals

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Multi-site digital transformation delivers a fully optimised supply chain and enhanced patient care

About Leeds Teaching Hospitals

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is part of the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) - a partnership between six hospital trusts across West Yorkshire and Harrogate that deliver acute services, combining their collective experience, expertise and resources to deliver the very highest standard of patient care across the entire region.

Challenges

With a high daily throughput of patients, staff and products, efficiency, scalability, and operational resilience are of vital importance for the hospital trusts that make up the WYAAT. In 2018, Leeds Teaching Hospitals prepared a business case for collaborative supply chain management, driven by a full transformation of the legacy IT infrastructure.

Building on the success of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Scan4Safety programme, this change would allow for automated data capture at every point of the patient journey, storing patient records and details of any supplies ordered and utilised in the Cloud, allowing for staff to track their efficacy and ensure only the best equipment is utilised, for the best available price. In this way, paper-based processes would give way to a cutting-edge IT infrastructure that would support real-time communication and collaboration across all sites and streamline the process of ordering medical supplies, with all electronic health records updated in real-time, and expediting the recall and reorder processes. This would not only enhance patient outcomes across the entire network and reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, but also provide WYAAT with full control and visibility of its supply chain, for improved quality and cost control.

Such processes are typically quite time-consuming with traditional paper-based record keeping, but the scalability and flexibility of the Cloud would ensure this critical data could be kept secure, in line with all applicable healthcare regulations, while still providing actionable insights across all six sites – insights that could then be used to drive higher standards of care across the entire UK.

However, to achieve this, high-performance connectivity between all six WYAAT sites and their supply chain provider was vital, which meant the search began for a technology partner who could support a full-scale digital transformation, with Leeds Teaching Hospitals leading the initiative.

Solution 

Leeds Teaching Hospitals engaged with Exponential-e to provide support for the entire WYAAT, due to a number of factors, including compliance with GDPR and HSCN requirements, and the ability to ensure a swift deployment, with zero disruption to patient care and administrative operations, thanks to previous experience executing similar deployments across the UK healthcare sector.

At the outset of the project, a dedicated account team at Exponential-e connected with internal IT teams at all six WYAAT trusts, and their US-based supply chain provider, establishing a project plan that would involve all parties concerned in order to ensure an efficient, stress-free deployment. Given the complexity of the desired solution, three-way communication has proven essential to the success of this project and led to a strong rapport developing between teams across each region, with regular communication helping drive the desired outcomes.

All six WYAAT sites were connected to a single server farm, consisting of four servers with full replication, to ensure operational resilience. Throughout this deployment process, Exponential-e conducted intensive testing, to ensure the resulting infrastructure will provide fully consistent, reliable performance across all sites, reviewing the findings with the WYAAT's own teams to identify opportunities for further growth and improvement.

Solution benefits

  • Secure, reliable interconnection of all six West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts, enhancing remote communication and collaboration.
  • High volumes of complex, sensitive data used to drive ongoing cost savings and operational improvements, without compromising security or compliance.
  • Full control and visibility of the entire supply chain, with all data updated in real-time.
  • Reduced time spent on administrative tasks, allowing hospital staff to prioritise patient care at all times. 
  • Flexible Cloud hosting delivers consistent performance, effortless scalability, and complete cost control.
  • Meets the guidance from DHSC and NHS Digital on the move towards Cloud-hosted solutions, utilising Exponential‐e's expertise to enable the rapid deployment of server capability.

We have quite an unusual setup when it comes to our IT infrastructure, but the Exponential-e team have been superb throughout, ensuring everyone stays in the loop and that our goals are consistently achieved. We're looking forward to continuing working with them.

Stuart MacMillian
Programme Director
West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts. 


It's time for the public sector to have its own digital revolution

Technological innovation is transforming the way public sector organisations across the UK engage with citizens and deliver critical services whenever and wherever they are needed. In this exclusive report, we consider the impact of these developments, and explore how organisations can accelerate their own digital journeys, ensuring exceptional citizen outcomes are the norm.
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NHS Digital

NHS-Digital-Bespoke-technology-solutions-for-the-UK-healthcare-sectors-digital-pioneer

Bespoke technology solutions for the UK healthcare sector's digital pioneer

About NHS Digital

NHS Digital is the entire UK health and social care system's trusted information and technology partner, utilising innovative solutions to enhance patient care, open new channels of communication, and optimise operational efficiency.

The Challenge

Before partnering with Exponential-e, NHS Digital utilised a number of suppliers for Cloud and WAN services, interconnecting twelve sites and multiple data centres across the UK. In line with the healthcare sector's stringent data protection regulations, all data transmitted between these sites must be encrypted, for which multiple point-to-point networks were utilised - an arrangement that proved incredibly time-consuming and expensive to maintain.

Things were further complicated by NHS Digital's ongoing requirement for bespoke solutions, which suppliers were frequently unable to deliver. Based on the singular nature of the healthcare sector's challenges, off-the-shelf solutions rarely proved suitable, which inevitably had a negative effect on the long-term technology roadmap.

In light of these concerns, NHS Digital made the decision to select a new technology partner who could not only meet their requirements in terms of performance, compliance, and flexibility, but also be an active partner in their long-term digital transformation journey.

Solution 

After being introduced to Exponential-e via referral, NHS Digital engaged with them to support their Cloud Connect requirements, providing diverse and resilient connectivity to AWS and Azure public clouds. To manage this initial deployment, a dedicated account team was assigned at Exponential-e, working closely with NHS Digital's own IT teams to ensure the success of the project, provide hands-on support and guidance whenever needed, and enable the design and delivery of bespoke solutions, as required.

Since then, the partnership has continued to evolve, with 2018 seeing NHS Digital begin the deployment of Exponential-e's SD-WAN solution, in order to overcome their connectivity challenges in a changing digital landscape. Following its successful launch, this solution provided NHS Digital's IT teams with maximum control and visibility of their cross-site connectivity, while automating all data encryption and protection processes, removing the resulting drain on internal IT teams' time. The combination of intelligent automation with a 'single pane of glass' view of the entire network and security ecosystem allows NHS Digital Teams to manage traffic by application and by user, ensuring all staff have access to the tools and information they need, wherever they are working from, with consistent performance across all regions and encryption of sensitive data available with a single click via the portal.

The strong rapport that has developed between NHS Digital and their Exponential-e account team since the initial Cloud Connect deployment - along with the inherent flexibility and scalability of the IT infrastructure - helped ensure a smooth transition to remote working for staff in response to COVID-19. Operational efficiency and patient care could be maintained across all regions, with proactive monitoring from Exponential-e's 24 / 7 support team, ensuring any potential issues or security risks could be swiftly detected and resolved.

Entering 2021, the Leeds Government Hub was successfully launched, in line with Government-led initiatives, with high-capacity connectivity delivered by Exponential-e. This provided more than 3,000 staff with the means to maintain operational efficiency and cost control, while NHS Digital and Exponential-e teams continue working closely together to identify any additional opportunities to achieve new cost savings and performance improvements, including the delivery of bespoke solutions, tailored to NHS Digital's unique requirements.

The ongoing success of this partnership paints a clear picture of what can be achieved within the healthcare sector when internal IT teams combine their expertise with that of trusted partners, who are deeply invested in the success of the sector and the different ways in which technological innovations can enhance both operational efficiencies and patient care, across the entire UK.

Solution benefits

  • Hands-on support from a dedicated account team, with a deep understanding of the healthcare sector
  • Optimal flexibility in terms of design and delivery, allowing solutions to be tailored to highly specific requirements 
  • Streamlined management of the entire network, with full visibility of all traffic and compliance with applicable regulations 

What we like most about Exponential-e is the willingness to do things differently. Our requirements are extremely challenging in that a significant element of customisation is required for virtually every project, but the team always goes the extra mile to deliver the right combination of solutions.

Stuart Meaking
NHS Digital.


It's time for the public sector to have its own digital revolution

Technological innovation is transforming the way public sector organisations across the UK engage with citizens and deliver critical services whenever and wherever they are needed. In this exclusive report, we consider the impact of these developments, and explore how organisations can accelerate their own digital journeys, ensuring exceptional citizen outcomes are the norm.
  6463 Hits

Anthony Nolan

Anthony-Nolan-Robust-and-secure-Private-Cloud-infrastructure-across-3-London-sites

Robust and secure Private Cloud infrastructure across 3 London sites.

Implementing a private Cloud and VPLS solution enables a future-proofed, scalable infrastructure. This ensures Anthony Nolan's data is accessible and available at all times so that people with blood cancer have the best chance of finding a match.

About Anthony Nolan

Anthony Nolan, now in its 40th anniversary year, was the world's first bone marrow register. The blood cancer charity has been saving lives for four decades by matching remarkable people willing to donate their bone marrow to patients in desperate need of a transplant.

Anthony Nolan operates an extensive global database of over 500,000 bone marrow, or stem cell, donors. This database enables the charity to provide over 1,000 blood cancer patients with a matching stem cell donor every year.

Solution 

Anthony Nolan decided to migrate its existing infrastructure, previously housed in its headquarters in London, to two data centre sites operated by Exponential-e in London. Key to the solution is improving business continuity through migrating the servers to these sites and therefore into dedicated off-site facilities.

Anthony Nolan chose to adopt Exponential-e's VPLS into the solution, Exponential-e's Tier 3 facilities have enterprise-class connectivity provided over a Network built and integrated for 100% uptime.

By connecting over Exponential-e's virtual private LAN, Anthony Nolan is also able to extend its own Network to capture all of its offices on one private WAN. The Network also provides dual resilience enabling further contingency and security.

Our database is accessed 24 hours a day and is essential in ensuring people with blood cancer have the best chance of finding a match. We need to ensure our data is safe, accessible and available at all times, now and in the future. As we continue growing year on year this demand is only increasing and we need to ensure we have the ability to expand our capacity in the future.

Marcin Fabjanczyk Infrastructure Manager, Anthony Nolan

 Challenges

With over 60,000 new donors registering per year, the rapid growth of the organisation and the volume of data it processes, means it is essential for Anthony Nolan to safeguard the management of its data to ensure business continuity. Registries across the world access the database 24 hours a day looking for a potential donor match for people with blood cancer.

If the database is not available or accessible, registries are not able to access it and this critical activity cannot take place.

Whilst the database must be constantly available, it also needs to be scalable. Anthony Nolan has a number of agreements with other donor databases, which are set to be incorporated into the same infrastructure - the set-up must be resilient enough to support this growth in data and the associated search requests.

In addition to this growth, the charity has targets to increase the rate of growth of registered donors, and is currently on track to achieve its target of 60,000 new donors every year. Its infrastructure must support this planned growth long-term.

Solution benefits

  • Implemented private Cloud and VPLS solution.
  • Future-proofed and scalable infrastructure.
  • Business continuity through both Cloud and Network infrastructure.
  • Data is always secure and private, across its own WAN and Exponential-e Tier 3 facilities.
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