Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides healthcare services for the people of North Northamptonshire and South Leicestershire, and with over 4,000 employees is one of the largest employers in Northamptonshire.
Kettering General Hospital’s ambition to be the most digitally enabled hospital group in the United Kingdom by 2023 was accelerated when the pandemic created a greater need to free up as much hospital space as possible for clinical use. The NHS Foundation Trust wanted to enable its staff to make a positive impact using technology in a quick and secure manner.
A lot of the Trust’s digital strategy was already in place pre-pandemic, but by fast-tracking further planned advancements, Kettering General Hospital – part of a group with Northampton General Hospital – recognised that it could drive its goals and also support its front-line staff to do their jobs during a challenging time.
Craig Taylor, Director of Cloud Solutions at Phoenix comments, “Coming from a place of legacy infrastructure, the Trust needed to completely modernise its data centre and unlock the power and ability that the cloud provides.”
Working with Kettering General Hospital, Phoenix is helping to completely transform the Trust’s IT estate with a focus on innovation, including migrating from on-premises to cloud, a data warehouse for its health intelligence team, and developing a new approach to virtual working using the Microsoft 365 Suite and Surface devices.
As a key component in Kettering’s digital strategy, a move to the cloud has allowed the Trust to scale as it brings in new services and implements rapid solutions, and has opened up the possibility of digital inclusion and equality, which will allow the hospital to reach even more people who need its services.
Phoenix Managing Director, Clare Metcalfe explains, “As Trusts move to the cloud, whether it’s in its entirety or as a hybrid strategy, they’ll be able to access functionality such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). All of these new exciting areas are leading edge.”
Moving forward, Kettering General Hospital is looking at how it can make best use of the resources and technology it has, allowing its employees to free up more of their time to better support their patients. As Microsoft’s Partner of the Year 2021, working with Phoenix gives the Trust access to Microsoft’s Azure FastTrack team and training through the Enterprise Skills Initiative to enable speed, while ensuring this change is delivered in a secure and sustainable way.
Clare Mwtcalfe concluded, “Knowing that the work we’re doing with Kettering General Hospital and many other NHS Trusts is having such a huge impact, is something that I take huge pride in. Because it’s that acknowledgment – the support that those patients are going to get has been enhanced through the technology advances that Microsoft, Phoenix, and other complementary technologies are making in these hospitals and in these Trusts.”