Luton gets virtual

Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has deployed a virtual desktop giving clinicians access to most of its systems across a range of devices.

AcceSSOnce from OCSL gives staff single sign-on access to the iSoft patient administration system, the Wardware nursing observation system, order communications and the picture archiving and communications system.

Mark England, the trust’s director of information management and technology told EHI that with so many disparate systems being used, it was essential to bring them together under one roof.

“It’s a problem we have got with having a best of breed approach for our electronic patient record, we’ve got too many systems to glue together,” he said.

Based on Microsoft software, acceSSOnce works across both desktops and mobile devices with either smart cards or through a secure, encrypted log-in.

“We’ve got a wi-fi solution live at the trust, so we’ve got mobile devices being rolled out and the virtual desktop infrastructure allows people to access the applications over the wi-fi. We’re using Windows 8 tablets and iPads, and the solution works on both,” said England.

“Instead of logging onto different systems, we log in once and look at all of the results in one go. It means that when you’ve got the patient selected, you can go into any system you need to get or enter information.”

‘Follow-me’ functionality means that if a clinician uses it at a desktop, then goes to see the patient at the bedside and logs on with a tablet device, the session will pick up where it left-off.

Luton and Dunstable also recently signed a contract for the JAC electronic prescribing and medicines administration system which it hopes will reduce prescribing errors and improve patient safety.

England said the trust would not have been able to begin implementing the system, which is due to go live in October, without acceSSOnce.

“With the JAC system we needed to have a VDI. The follow-me functionality is crucial with e-prescribing. When an intravenous drug is prepared we need access to the system in there, and then when you take the IV to the bedside and administer the drug, you need access again,” he said.

The virtual desktop is being used by 40 clinicians in the paediatric wards and the trust plans a full roll-out by December.

Luton and Dunstable is also looking at introducing a ‘bring your own device’ scheme for clinicians.

“We’re planning to look at that in autumn. The idea is that if they are on call, senior clinical staff can access it from home on their device and view results and charts from the hospital,” explained England.

The trust is also implementing the Kainos Evolve electronic document management system this summer, which will also interface with acceSSOnce.