With Microsoft’s support for Windows 7 coming to an end at the beginning of 2020 Northwick Park Hospital needed assistance to meet the deadline to upgrade over 2,100 devices to Windows 10.  

London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the largest integrated healthcare trusts in the country, employing over 9,000 clinical and support staff to serve a diverse population of approximately one million people.  

Trusted Technology Partnership were able to reference their technical skills, knowledge and track record of completing similar projects in this environment and were awarded the tender to refresh the estate and deploy Windows 10 across Northwick Park Hospital and Ealing Hospital over a seven-month period. 

With the Covid Pandemic stretching the Trust to its limits, the project objectives moved away from the immediate need of a simple hardware refresh to the urgent requirement of new equipment to allow greater collaboration and video conferencing. The Trust also needed to consider the cyber security of staff working from home or in less private environments.  

All in One devices with integrated speakers and cameras were deployed together with Microsoft Teams enabling collaboration between onsite and home-working staff. Clinical staff were also able to engage with patients remotely keeping them safe whilst delivering critical care during the COVID crisis.

The project's scope was changed to two stages to take into account the demands of the pandemic, with 1,500 new laptops and PCs in the first stage and 600 PCs in the second stage upgraded to Windows 10. Utilising their knowledge and experience of the Healthcare IT environment, all data and software were scoped and managed by Trusted Technology Partnership’s project managers as part of the project planning.  

Experienced engineering teams executed the migration of data and software including ICE, PACS, JAC, Viewpoint and Endovault applications to the user’s requirements.  

 Trusted Technology also offered enhanced data security through the safe disposal of the old devices via their waste partner Restore Technology. 

A flexible approach to the project was achieved by working in partnership with the  

Trusts Digital Services Team and suppliers to create an integrated project team.  We visit every department within the Hospital prior to the deployment, to meet with the head of department. Explain what we are doing and why, have a discussion regarding known department software, access arrangements, data, and anything else, answer any questions they may have. And advise a date we are likely to begin that department. 

 A lead engineer acts as a conduit between our engineers and the hospital trust IT, to have a point of contact which information can be filtered down from the trust through to our engineers conducting morning catch up’s every day with engineers to discuss issues, requirements.  

 Engineers test image deployment processes, advising trusts additional steps that can be taken to ensure a deployment project of 1000+ devices runs at the required pace, and is successful, working with trust IT teams to enhance image process before deployment commences. 

 Working with pace and approaching busy departments such as A&E with flexibility our engineers ensure devices that are replaced are fully functional, all clinical applications tested with engineer present and setting up complex printing, prescriptions, labels, patient wrist bands so users have as little disruption as possible.  

 Our engineers work with suppliers to install and configure many applications throughout the hospital, Installing specialist attached medical devices and any peripheral devices such as camera’s and Barcode devices.   

 Trust IT Directors and Execs have commented how much they value this, approach being seen and visible makes a huge difference to them. 

This resulted in a total of 2,100 devices, both existing and new being upgraded and deployed for essential workers during the pandemic. These devices supported more than fifty wards and departments throughout the Windows 10 rollout. Additionally, over five hundred headsets, webcams and speakers were deployed during the lockdown to respond to the evolving Covid-19 needs.

The entire project was completed in seven short months, in spite of the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.

• Increased cybersecurity across all devices. 

• Reduced service desk incidents and hardware failures. 

• Reduced ongoing costs following a move to a warranted environment which negates the need to replace parts in workstations not under warranty. 

• Focus on further investment and deployment of new services, rather than firefighting out of date and old equipment. 

• Increased productivity and performance, benefitting from higher specification PCs.  

• Improved, refreshed hardware, unlocking key projects implementing new Trust wide software and systems, previously on hold from old out of date and under spec hardware. 

• Greater asset awareness of devices and their locations, previously complicated due to Covid and departments being moved quickly to cope with the pandemic pressures.