NHS Southampton PRESS RELEASE

Healthcare Computing Ltd today announced the successful completion of its One GP Domain Project with NHS Southampton City’s IT department. The new infrastructure delivers more centralised IT management across the PCT, while reducing the costs involved in deploying software and day to day administration. With over 1,200 users, 80 servers and 37 GP practices, NHS Southampton City’s IT department wanted to move from a reactive model of support, to a more proactive one, where issues could be identified before causing downtime.

The completed project enables IT to be managed more centrally, and has created a single Active Directory domain covering all sites. Advanced monitoring of every server, network switch and backup job has been implemented, and Healthcare Computing has created a central console for the PCT which can be used for deploying software and to carry out backups. The team set up organisation units for each practice, and sub-groups for users based on job function, meaning that all staff can be viewed from one central place and tasks such as re-setting passwords which used to be onerous processes, can now be completed immediately.

Damien McCann, who heads up Primary Care IT Development at NHS Southampton City, says: “The project has been really successful and the end result is excellent. One of the main benefits is that we can now roll out software really simply. A few mouse clicks can roll out an entire solution, which reduces costs across the board, as there is no need to disrupt services by going into the surgery. We can manage everything from one central location, and we also now have a really good foundation that will mean any future changes will be less complex and cheaper to implement. We believe the One GP Domain Project along with the associated work puts Southampton amongst the most technically advanced GP IT estates in the UK.”

Not only have the benefits been felt at PCT level, but GPs are delighted too.  Dr Hoghton of St Mary’s surgery says: “We are already feeling the benefits: the recent roll out of the Map of Medicine took place with no interruption at all. The solution just suddenly appeared on my desktop. We are delighted.”

Read the NHS Southampton Case Study