Innovation in the NHS: Moving to the Cloud
Over the last few weeks we have looked at statements made by NHS leaders Jeremy Hunt, Simon Stevens and Matthew Swindells about how technology can transform the way services are delivered in the UK.
In an ongoing series ahead of our inaugural Health innovation event, we have explored at how technology such as Skype for Business and Microsoft Health can help the NHS not only meet rising demands, but also save time and money.
For example, we looked at how Microsoft Health’s platform can support apps that help empower patients to take control of their health, while Skype for Business can help drive efficiency with the ability to manage and monitor care remotely.
In the final blog of the series, we will take a look at how the Cloud can help NHS organisations make even greater savings for the healthcare economy.
UK Data Centres
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the introduction of UK data centres to provide cloud based services for businesses and public sector organisations that have difficulty hosting data outside of UK soil.
With the UK data centre comes the opportunity for NHS organisations to re-think how they deliver services – from internal IT and data analysis to managing finances and enabling small and medium enterprises to provide innovation to business units within the NHS.
For instance, financially, services such as Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service reduce the demand for costly on-premise data centres as organisations can rent space in a Microsoft managed, maintained and upgraded data centre. By moving to the Cloud and Cloud services, NHS organisations can therefore reduce spend on maintenance and real estate.
Similarly, using Cloud can save NHS organisations time and deliver greater efficiency. With more and more NHS organisations requiring extra storage through PACS (Picture Archiving, and Communications Systems), connected devices, and clinical applications, the requirements for flexible and unlimited storage is evident.
This is where Cloud services such as Azure Stack and Azure Site Recovery can help.
For many Public Sector organisations, scalability is key. With Azure Stack – Microsoft’s new hybrid cloud product – organisations are able to deliver Azure services from their own data centres meaning they can create scale and high availability from an on-premise environment. This gives organisations the flexibility to access data and Cloud services in a way that suits them.
Similarly, Azure Site Recovery provides Disaster Recover As-a-service, which helps simplify and automate the replication and recovery of services in a disaster.
And with a greater drive to improve public health by enhancing online access, website traffic, portals and communication systems are going to increasingly feel the strain of ever greater demand.
NHS Choices chose Microsoft Azure to provide the scale they needed for their website. In January 2015 they had 52 million visits – something that would not have been possible without the elastic scale of cloud services.
Not only did Azure readily handle that recent all-time-high figure (up from 43 million in January 2014), but it supports NHS Choices at an annual cost that’s 40 percent lower than its previous hosting provider.
Microsoft’s Cloud services can also help support the innovation coming at pace from small and medium suppliers.
Independent software vendors and individual companies can list their applications on the Azure marketplace to be purchased directly, while small software vendors are able to use the scale of the Microsoft Cloud to deliver a secure, scalable, always-on application – hosted in Azure.
For example, H-POD from Paperpost, works with Trusts’ patient administration systems to ensure that physical letters are handled and delivered efficiently, as well as taking the administrative burden of the post room and outsourcing it for lower costs. Paperpost plan to use the UK hosted Azure data centres to create an online version of their software.
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Innovation in the UK healthcare economy is being driven in buckets. The top down approach of creating a 5 year forward view, with a ‘paperless 2020’ vision, supported by the National Information Board projects, creates the mandate to allow change.
Microsoft is supporting this change with our technologies and investing in proving the value of it. With engagement from Healthcare organisations, Microsoft can partner with you to deliver value back to your organisation.
