NHS IT function delivers!

The NHS has proven itself to be the wonderful creation it is over this last year of fighting COVID19. We’ve seen on the news how healthcare professionals are working tirelessly on the front line of this war, as the unrelenting pandemic brings services to the extremes of what they can deliver with the resources available.

What we haven’t seen are the sterling efforts of teams in the background, like the Administration staff, Management and IT teams, who have provided vital connectivity between consultants or GPs and us, the patients.

In March 2020 the country went into national lockdown – anyone who could work from home had to do so.

The NHS suddenly had to look at how it worked with patients in a different way – how could it’s clinicians continue to ensure patients had the support they needed without physically seeing them?

Many healthcare organisations had already begun projects to look at implementing video conferencing for patient appointments.

With the urgent presence of Covid19 the timescales that were often planned to last two, three or even four years in a given locality, suddenly got compressed.

The IT staff across the NHS rolled out technology, training and processes in weeks when the need was imperative.

Another group of the NHS that has performed under pressure.

Sustaining this performance, when the pandemic eventually subsides is, and will be, a looming challenge for NHS leaders who have collectively spent a fortune on not quite delivering solutions in the ITC space historically.