Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust speeds up patient care through virtual collaborative working

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust is working with Siemens Communications to enable virtual, real-time collaboration between its multi-disciplinary medical teams. The Trust will use Siemens' presence aware communications software suite HiPath OpenScape® to synchronise teams of doctors, quickly and easily, to facilitate faster action and decision making for patients.

In addition to OpenScape, the Trust has chosen Siemens' award-winning HiPath 8000 softswitch platform to seamlessly migrate its 12,000 users to a converged voice and data environment. The highly scalable HiPath 8000 is based on the open standards Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which means that Newcastle Hospitals will be able to easily integrate existing applications into the new IP-based communications environment.

"Individual patients typically require varying expertise from different doctors spanning several departments," said Paul Brewis, Operational Services Manager, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. "We currently bring this expertise together through a series of time consuming internal meetings. Using OpenScape however, we will be conducting these meetings virtually and plan to integrate the suite with our own electronic patient records and X-Ray systems. This will ensure each of our doctors have access to all relevant information on our patients, ensuring the delivery of quality, personal care."

Using OpenScape to increase the speed of internal decision making will add enormous value to Newcastle Hospitals' transplantation system as Paul Brewis explains: "We run a specialist transplantation unit that requires us to react as quickly as possible when organs become available. The ability for us to assemble teams containing the appropriate expertise is crucial in ensuring the delivery of successful operations."

Paul Brewis sees further potential for OpenScape at Newcastle Hospitals, including using the suite to bridge the communications gap between primary and secondary healthcare. He continues: "Communications technology like OpenScape has the potential to involve GPs in the patient consultation process, if they are required to offer guidance on the treatment of individual patients. The obvious benefit of virtual collaboration is that the GPs wouldn't need to leave their local practices in order to do so. By speeding up consultation, the NHS will take enormous strides to improving productivity and reducing waiting lists."

"The commitment of the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to enhance its communications infrastructure reflects our LifeWorks vision - the delivery of seamless end-to-end communications regardless of location, network or device," said Tim Bishop, Head of Strategy, Siemens Communications. "A secure, seamless, open standards communications environment coupled with real-time collaboration applications will enable rapid co-ordination of medical teams with faster and easier access to patients' data and records. The boost to productivity will help improve the already high levels of care the Trust delivers to its patients."

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