Mid-Yorks Trust to upgrade its IT and networking, and implement RFID tagging

The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust is upgrading its technology infrastructure to give patients and medical staff easier and faster access to hospital records.

A 10-year contract to provide and manage the upgraded system was awarded to communications integrator Affiniti.

The contract covers provision of a managed data network at the trust’s Dewsbury hospital as well as two new hospitals under construction at Pinderfields and Pontefract.

The new wireless network will offer the potential for medical staff to access test results at patients’ bedsides bringing up results, X-rays and medical records in real-time.

Easy access to information will allow medical staff to save time enabling them to focus more on caring for patients.

The additional capacity provided by the network will help the hospital trust ensure seamless use of large sensitive files, such as X-rays and picture archives.

The advanced wireless network will also allow the trust’s hospitals to use RFID technology to track the location of critical and expensive medical equipment across all its buildings.

The highly flexible, robust and shared data network, will allow the trust to plan for a paper-free future, said Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust director of information management and technology performance Simon Nahk.

“This will result in the need for much less storage space which costs money, staff time will be saved not having to chase information or queue for PCs and we will have increased security for medical equipment because we can electronically tag and track it,” said Nahk.

“The potential for integrating the telephone system with sophisticated IT systems to plan and schedule staff is another possibility the new network will open up,” he said.

The network will benefit the new hospitals when they open in 2010 but it is expected that the Dewsbury hospital will profit from the technology as early as next year.