How does an NHS trust 'connect all'?

Healthcare IT systems should improve access to patient information; but if staff have to spend too much time and effort logging-in and finding the details they need, it will remain practically inaccessible.

Jonathan Leviss MD, chief medical officer for Sentillion, argues there is a solution to this problem. Single sign-on enables staff to log-in quickly, while patient context management and customised workflows mean they see the same patient details in every application they use.

Single sign-on with strong authentication, such as a building access card or an NHS CRS Smartcard and PIN, meanwhile, can also eliminate the distraction of signing on to different workstations.

The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust recently deployed Sentillion’s Vergence solution in response to concerns from clinicians about the length of time it was taking them to log-in to its systems and the clinical governance issues that could arise from having to find patient details in all of them.

It is already seeing the benefits. Indeed, the trust’s director of IM&T, Dr Saroj Patel, says: “The initial feedback from our clinicians is that they love it.”