IT services for healthcare organisations
The platform behind better patient care
Every initiative in healthcare leads back to the patient. Electronic patient records, shared care between hospitals and GP practices, faster discharge and better use of data all depend on infrastructure that stays up, performs under pressure and keeps patient data safe.
NHS IT teams are being asked to deliver all of it while reducing costs, working through years of accumulated technical debt and meeting some of the strictest data governance standards in the UK. LIMA provides the resilient, secure platforms that clinical systems run on, so your team can focus on the transformation your organisation needs.
We understand healthcare
LIMA has worked with NHS trusts and commissioning support units for 20 years, delivering private cloud, infrastructure, network and security services across acute and primary care.
We build and run the environment that clinical applications depend on, which means understanding what those applications need to do on the ward as well as in the data centre. Alongside IT teams, we spend time with clinicians, chief clinical information officers and the people responsible for delivering clinical services, to understand where technology is holding them back and work from there. A platform that meets every technical requirement but slows down a nurse logging in hasn’t done its job.
Every engagement starts with an assessment of your current estate and your organisational priorities, from EPR rollout to cloud strategy, and produces a roadmap that reflects how you’re funded as well as what you want to achieve.
Who we work with
Our healthcare customers range from acute foundation trusts to the commissioning support units that provide data services across whole regions. Services include private cloud and hybrid platforms, infrastructure consolidation, vulnerability management, backup and disaster recovery.
Company background Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides high-quality healthcare for the entire population of Gloucestershire. The NHS trust has around 8,000 staff and provides...
The challenges facing healthcare IT
Healthcare IT teams support clinical systems that can’t go down, protect some of the most sensitive data held anywhere, and serve a workforce that never clocks off. They’re also expected to lead digital transformation on budgets that are under constant pressure.
Financial pressure
The NHS is being asked to do more with less, with cost reduction targets set alongside expectations of better services. Capital funding is rarely guaranteed from one year to the next, which often pushes trusts into buying large amounts of infrastructure up front and hoping it fits future needs. LIMA designs platforms that scale in phases, so investment follows demand rather than running ahead of it and budgets stay predictable over the life of the platform.
Digital transformation
Electronic patient records change how care is delivered and make healthcare professionals more efficient. But EPR is only as good as the infrastructure beneath it. Clinical systems need to be available around the clock, quick to access and served to every ward - often across multiple sites - over a secure, reliable network.
Siloed infrastructure
Many hospital estates have grown one clinical application at a time. A new system for one department arrives with its own hardware, and IT inherits the job of managing, patching, backing up and securing it. Over a few years that leaves multiple environments on different technologies from different vendors: expensive to run, hard to protect, demanding on specialist skills and difficult to draw data from. LIMA helps trusts consolidate onto a standardised platform that is easier to manage and more cost-effective to run.
Shared services
Acute trusts often host applications and provide IT services for GP practices and other primary care organisations that have no data centre of their own. Bringing acute and primary care closer together, including shared patient records, can shorten the wait between a GP referral and a consultant appointment. That calls for a secure, multi-tenant platform built to serve more than one organisation.
Security and data governance
Patient data is among the most sensitive data there is, and a well-known target for cybercriminals. Healthcare organisations are assessed every year on how that data is protected, while keeping complex clinical infrastructure patched and up to date is a significant overhead for any IT team.
Company background NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) provides end-to-end support to health systems, employing approximately 1,750+ people. It includes fifty clinical commissioning...
Tailored solutions for healthcare
Platform
Clinical systems need a platform that doesn’t stop. LIMA designs and manages private cloud environments built for healthcare, including active-active platforms stretched across two sites so services carry on if a data centre is lost. Multi-tenancy supports shared services for primary care, and the platform can extend into public clouds such as Microsoft Azure, so each workload runs where it fits best.
Connectivity
End-of-bed care depends on wireless and network infrastructure that reaches every ward and performs at peak times. LIMA designs and manages secure, resilient networks that deliver clinical applications to the devices your staff carry, wherever they’re working.
Security
LIMA’s dedicated security team helps healthcare organisations protect patient data and reduce risk. Our Vulnerability Detection and Remediation (VDR) service is used by NHS customers to take on patching and vulnerability management across complex infrastructure, while managed SOC services, delivered with our partner CYSIAM, provide continuous monitoring and response.
Co-managed support
Healthcare IT departments are often large, skilled and stretched. LIMA works alongside your team, taking on the platform management, maintenance and specialist work that pulls people away from transformation projects, so your in-house expertise goes where it’s needed most.
Business Continuity
When a clinical system goes down, patient care is affected. Backup-as-a-Service and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service keep your data and systems recoverable, whether the disruption comes from hardware failure, a cyber attack or a lost site.
Data and AI
Consolidating infrastructure brings data together in one place, where it can be protected properly and put to work. LIMA helps healthcare organisations build the data foundations for better decision-making, and gives a clear, honest view of where AI and automation can reduce administrative load today.
“LIMA’s flexible approach to adapt to our changing requirements was key to the project’s success. Our teams worked well together, and the result gives us the additional functionality, scalability and resilience we sought.”
Kevin Roberts, Development Manager (Business Intelligence) at MLCSU.
Why LIMA for healthcare
Experience
Years of work with acute trusts and commissioning support units, and an understanding of what clinical applications and EPR programmes demand from the platform beneath them.
Partnership
Dedicated account teams covering technical, commercial and customer success, with direct access to our senior leadership.
Resilience
Always-on platforms designed so that losing a data centre doesn’t mean losing patient services.
Security and governance
Our private cloud platform and our organisation are assessed annually against the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit to confirm they are safe to hold patient data.
Strategy
Roadmaps shaped by clinicians as well as IT, with investment phased to match how you’re funded.
Broad IT portfolio
We won’t push you towards a specific technology. We’re vendor agnostic, with deep partnerships across infrastructure, platform, security and modern workplace.