Siemens wins Barts network contract

Barts and The London NHS Trust has awarded a four-year, multi million-pound contract to Siemens Enterprise Communications to implement a fixed and wireless LAN and security infrastructure.

The work will provide the trust, including the new hospitals, with a single network able to handle data, voice and video streaming from multiple wireless devices and PCs at the new 300-bed Barts Smithfield hospital, now under construction.

The new wireless network will enable information to be captured and added to a patient’s records without requiring data to be re-entered.

The first phase, in what will be a three stage programme, will be rolled out at Barts in September 2009 with the “global completion” of all releases at all sites to be completed by 2016.

Doug Howe, deputy director of ICT at Barts and The London NHS Trust, said: “Siemens will provide a secure and flexible LAN communications infrastructure with the required secure 24/7 information access and ‘five nines’ system reliability.

“The company [will] help us to develop a road map for technology adoption as the new hospital building work progresses, which will support our standards of clinical excellence.”

Siemens Enterprise Communications and its Enterasys networks division will work with Netconnection Systems to design and implement the new architecture as well as advising on future system innovations, such as tagging supplies and equipment to improve asset management.

Howe told E-Health Insider the wireless infrastructure will enable the trust to implement a range of innovative new technologies. “We are already asking clinicians what they would like to see as a result of the new infrastructure and three reoccurring themes at the moment are mobile computing, asset location and tracking and IP telephony,” he said.

“We’re creating forums that allow clinicians to recommend what technology they would like to see implemented to resolve the problems they have. We’re also planning a series of technology open days where they can touch and get a feel for products and provide feedback so that we can make decisions in the next 18 months about what the most useful technology would be.” he added..

Andy Clark, head of public sector at Siemens Enterprise Communications, said: “We’re delighted to be delivering an integrated voice and data network for an acknowledged world leader in medicine whose two new hospitals will be purpose-built to maintain twenty-first century standards of clinical excellence.

“It prepares the platform for the trust to build on and gain the long term benefits from unified communications. These will include potential innovations in real time diagnosis, mobile working and streamlined operations.”

The contract is part of a wider £1 billion project to build two new hospitals at Barts’ Smithfield and The Royal London Hospital’s Whitechapel sites.

Links: 

Siemens Enterprise Communications

Barts and the London NHS Trust New Hospitals Programme Report June 2009