Two hospital trusts in London and Birmingham have had Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone systems installed across their sites in the hope of saving money and reducing the load on their existing networks. The systems, installed by BT at Guy’s & St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, will enable phone calls to be received and made over a combined phone and computer network. Guy’s & St Thomas’s system was installed over the spare capacity in the LAN (local area network) which connects the two hospital sites, one in London Bridge, the other in Westminster. One thousand IP phones were installed under a £1.8m contract between BT and Nortel, and new direct-dial phone numbers have been assigned to various departments, which BT say have cut call diversions. Calls between the sites in the hospital are free of charge. The new system in Guy’s & St Thomas’s also features messaging services and speech-recognition calling supplied by Nortel. Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals’ system supports both analogue and internet calls, and is also based across two sites: New Cross Hospital and Wolverhampton & Midland Counties Eye Infirmary. It was developed to replace the old infrastructure and is part of an overall redevelopment programme in the trust. According to BT, VoIP telephony was chosen as it is future-proof. Neil Hemming of BT Global Services Convergent Solutions said: “Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust and Guys & St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust are demonstrating a real drive and commitment to modernise the use of IT and communications in the health service."
