The University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) NHS Trust has picked services from NTT DATA UK to modernise its infrastructure.

The trust will adopt the company’s ‘Device as a Service’ (DaaS) approach, hoped to speed-up the time it takes staff to login to systems, and provide single sign-on and virtual desktop solutions.

NTT Data UK is delivering the programme in phases, the first to provide the ‘underpinning infrastructure’ and to introduce 6,000 new devices. The project also includes image creation and deployment, physical assessments and consultancy, deployment and connection of the new technology, removal of the trust’s old equipment, asset management, and ongoing business-as-usual support.

The company said: “The deployment of virtual desktops also significantly streamlines the trust’s hardware needs. The new infrastructure supports 500-600 simultaneous virtual desktops, allowing for the use of flexible ‘zero client’ hardware with super-fast logins, improving agility and resilience of the organisation.”

Andy Carruthers, CIO at UHL, said: “The hospital is a 24/7 organisation, with patient care its focus. So, refreshing IT is like changing the engines on an aeroplane while it’s still flying.

“A Device as a Service model allows us to smooth the financing over the years of the contract rather than having a spike in investment every time we need to refresh equipment across the trust. As a result, the trust could focus on maintaining the highest levels of performance and security with its tech in the future, with or without having to make do with aging platforms.”

Earlier in the year, HTN reported on the trust’s electronic prescribing and medicines administration go live, speaking with Gang Xu, Consultant Nephrologist and Graeme Hall, Chief Pharmacist, you can read the interview here.