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Imperial College Healthcare is a London-based National Health Service (NHS) Trust and one of the largest in the UK. It operates across three major campuses with nearly 50 satellite sites providing acute and specialist healthcare for over one million people annually.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is also at the forefront of digital innovation within the NHS. The Trust has achieved an advanced rating (level six of seven) for the digital maturity of its clinical services following an assessment by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). This is an internationally recognized standard for electronic medical record transformation and makes Imperial College Healthcare one of a small group of organizations who have reached this standard in England.<\/p>\n
A Surge In Demand For Digital Services<\/p>\n
This achievement is due to the work of employees like Yusuf Mangera, technical architect, and his team. They have played a key role in demonstrating the value of digital solutions leading to a surge in demand across the Trust.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve matured as an organization through the successful digitization of our patient records. As a result, there is a huge and growing appetite to digitize more services for our clinicians in the most efficient and optimized manner,\u201d says Mangera.<\/p>\n
Addressing Infrastructure Challenges<\/p>\n
Despite its leading position in digital innovation, Imperial College Healthcare IT infrastructure had become fragmented, a common issue within the NHS. The large, complex, multi-site IT environment was hindering the rollout of new digital services as operational maintenance consumed the resources of Mangera\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last decade, IT investment and digital services have become central to healthcare delivery within the Trust. However, we were under constant pressure when it came to the maintenance of our environment. We need to ensure a high level of availability of services for our clinicians so that there is no impact on patient care,\u201d says Mangera.<\/p>\n
This need for stability and reliability, combined with the increasing demand for new digital services and the crucial importance of data security, drove the Trust to seek a more modern and robust infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to maintain high levels of security for the patients and for the data that we hold within the organization, we needed to modernize our infrastructure to grow our digital services in a secure way,\u201d says Mangera.<\/p>\n
Having used VMware solutions for 15 years, VMware Cloud Foundation\u2014the private cloud platform offered by Broadcom\u2014was the logical next step.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenges with public cloud, over the last few years, we\u2019ve seen are spiraling costs in order to consume AI services. Our investment in VMware Cloud Foundation allows us, in the long term, to layer Private AI. And the ambition for the Trust is to ensure that we securely have a Private AI environment in order to innovate with the data that we have,\u201d Mangera says.<\/p>\n
Centralized And Automated Management Frees Up Time For Innovation<\/p>\n
The Trust is building a private cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation that spans its multiple sites. This enables Mangera\u2019s team to centrally manage the entire IT environment\u2014including compute, storage and networking\u2014significantly simplifying operations and improving visibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cVMware solutions have been our bread and butter for 15 years,\u201d says Mangera. \u201cMoving to VMware Cloud Foundation was a natural choice and has allowed us to consolidate and better manage the entire environment through a single pane of glass. This has led to the better availability of our services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the relatively new adoption of VMware Cloud Foundation, the solution\u2019s automation capabilities have already removed a burden of manual work for Mangera\u2019s team. \u201cThe automation of routine maintenance tasks represents a significant shift for our team. We can now dedicate our time to strategic initiatives and innovation that will directly benefit the Trust,\u201d Mangera says.<\/p>\n
Delivering Efficient And Effective Patient Care<\/p>\n
Perhaps most importantly, because of the simplified management and automation, service availability has improved and because clinicians have uninterrupted access to systems, they can deliver more efficient and effective patient care. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to improve both the patient experience and clinician productivity,\u201d says Mangera. \u201cVMware Cloud Foundation frees us from constant IT maintenance, allowing us to focus on digitizing processes, streamlining workflows and equipping clinicians with the necessary tools to improve patient outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n