Cardiff Responsible For One Of The Biggest NHS Mobile Rollouts

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is about to deploy the next phase of its Community Mobile Working Project, which will see staff equipped with over 800 netbook devices. 

The volume of mobile working devices given to employees at the Board will make it one of the biggest mobile rollouts in the NHS. 

Cardiff and Vale has been working with UK based public sector ICT services provider Stone Group to ensure it completes the implementation by late summer 2015.  

The project started life as a small pilot programme where 20 nurses were testing the use of the mobile PARIS Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in 2009.  

The deployment of around 800 mobile devices to community and mental health service staff is intended to help clinical staff better serve Cardiff and Vale's population of around 445,000.  

"The objective of the mobile project is to assure effective and secure communication of key clinical events between all divisions of the Health Board," claimed PARIS Programme Manager Mark Cahalane.  

"Our staff can now visit patients anywhere in the field and both view and update their PARIS held clinical records remotely via their devices.  

"This allows for hand written reports to become a thing of the past, reducing the admin burden of duplicating work 'back at base' and giving staff additional patient time, ultimately improving the quality of case which is our primary focus," he added.  

Stone Group Provides Expert Advice 

From the original deployment of 435 devices, 205 will be replaced during 2015 - Stone Group provided Cardiff and Vale with the appropriate guidance needed and the Health Board then chose Lenovo netbooks for being lightweight and robust.  

Feedback from clinical staff also means that the NHS organisation has chosen 02 as its new mobile provider because of its strong 4G coverage in the area.  

Stone Group has configured each device used by the Health Board so it is equipped with NHS security imaging and Cardiff and Vale branding on the device itself, making it less re-saleable.  

A three year warranty for each device has also been provided, alongside security cards which allow clinicians to sever the connection remotely should a device be stolen or lost.  

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