Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust migrates to the cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation.
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 specialised hospital services from two sites at Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General Hospital. The trust’s five-year strategic plan lays out a program to provide and improve patient care through a significant digital transformation.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust needed a robust and reliable foundation for the critical electronic patient records system that doctors, and nurses would rely on every day and a cost-efficient path for its journey to the cloud.
After listening to the trust’s requirements, LIMA Networks identified VMware Cloud Foundation™ as offering an optimal solution for the trust’s transformation journey.
The LIMA solution specialist’s expertise and commitment were critical to the NHS trust deploying the solution, which combines VMware vSAN™ for storage, VMware NSX Data Centre networking, and VMware vRealize Suite for management and automation, in just nine months.
The trust is now able to use IT resources more efficiently and is prepared to migrate its systems to the public cloud.
The challenge
- Modernised legacy data centre to build an electronic patient record system, that can be accessed anywhere, on any device.
- Identified the optimal solution for digital transformation journey, gaining mobility, scalability and agility.
- Deployed a new solution at speed with help of an experienced solutions provider who is dynamic and efficient in the way it deploys technology solutions.
The solution
The team at Gloucestershire NHS was really forward-thinking; the support from LIMA was critical to them successfully implementing VMware Cloud Foundation. LIMA devoted a network specialist, a server infrastructure specialist, and a VMware specialist to work with Gloucestershire NHS. Although the engineers at Gloucestershire NHS manage the system day-to-day, LIMA’s expertise was vital to completing the implementation in such a short space of time, whilst ensuring that the system met the needs of the Trust.
VMware Cloud Foundation provided the backbone for the suite of products that Gloucestershire NHS needed to deliver their digital transformation program. The platform now supports upwards of 50 plus clinical systems along with corporate, building management and IT infrastructure systems.
Technology implemented
The outcomes
VMware Cloud Foundation enables consistent, secure infrastructure to support the trust’s digital transformation and, specifically, its new electronic patient record system. When the trust had to facilitate remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cloud Foundation also provided the platform to give staff remote access to work from home.
Built on full-stack HCI technology, the VMware Cloud Foundation hybrid cloud platform enables consistent, secure infrastructure and operations. Together vSAN, NSX Data Center and vRealize Suite provide a robust and resilient foundation to support the trust’s digital transformation and, specifically, its new electronic patient record system. Doctors and nurses can now find anything they need to know about a patient from anywhere and on any device.