South West Yorkshire to become NHS WiFi ‘fast follower’
- 13 February 2018
South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust will be one of the first participants of a nationwide scheme to roll out free wi-fi across the NHS.
The trust has been allocated funding to be an early adopter of NHS WiFi, which will see wireless internet access offered to patients, clinicians and the general public inside NHS buildings.
Starting in March, South West Yorkshire Partnership will be install wi-fi in all settings with “regular client-facing contact”, with the aim of having free internet available across the trust’s entire estate by April 2018.
The trust is working with IT service provider Daisy Group to roll out the service.
Paul Foster, head of IT services and systems development, said: “This work will provide our patients, service users and public with secure, stable, and reliable WiFi capability across the Trust sites, which will be consistent with the required national standards.”
NHS WiFi entered its first phase in early 2017, targeting primary and urgent care settings. As of June last year, it had been installed in 991 GP practices across England.
Hospitals and secondary care providers will follow this year in a second phase spanning 2018/19, which will also free internet access rolled out to mental health and community organisations.
Online access is delivered via an NHS.UK landing page, which hosts national healthcare information alongside locally-generated content about local health services.
South West Yorkshire Partnership registered its interest in becoming an early adopter. It was one of several trusts competing for the funding to implement the service on-site.
According to the trust, early feedback from the programme has been positive. At its Newton Lodge facility, where wi-fi is already available, service users are able to bid for social housing, manage bank accounts and shop online from the wards.
4 Comments
Why? The phrase too little, too late springs to mind.
My own Trust installed free WiFi for patients several years ago, but these days improved 4G coverage and a more competitive mobile market means many of the drivers in the business case are no longer valid.
Ade,
I have not seen a distillation of the objectives of this , community primary care all “piloted” , but not sure of the evaluation criteria , so many different ways to deliver this.
Is NHS aiming to be in effect an ISP , but none of the user, passwords roam in NHS locations.
Surely it would be cheaper to ensure adequate 4G and 5G provision
Folks will possibly moan that the free service is poor , drop outs etc .
So does anyone have a plan on a page and objectives , common landing pages etc etc
TBH. All seems a little disjointed ( possibly) ..
I could make nhs.uk the landing page for current free WifFi if I wanted to. Lots of trusts have already opened up free WiFi. The main problem they have rolling out free WiFi to patients are existing contracts with the likes of Hospedia and the actual wireless infrastructure for themselves anyway. You need recent generation access points and controllers to be able to handle the traffic, and possibly screen out streaming media etc. You could put in a separate network including all the access points and controllers, but they would interfere, and good luck getting the access, and the power into there. It really isn’t clear what the objective is or what is being paid for?
I would agree the objectives don’t seem clear. I think it has largely sprung out of a soundbite. Then on top of that we have people saying “well, we could get credentials, and start doing things like find out what a patients views are, target information, even grant access to records”. The core objective is free WiFi for patients, which is essentially just a connection. Like yourself I think maybe too little too late. The offer me free WiFi all over the place, and most of it is so rubbish I just use the data on my phone. With 4G 5G this will increasingly be the case?
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