University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust ‘At a Glance’
- The Trust comprises of three major hospitals:
- Walsgrave Hospital, East Coventry; Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital, Central Coventry and the Hospital of St.Cross, Rugby
- More than 1 million patients per annum attended by 6,500 staff
- Supported from SunGard’s Coventry Recovery Centre
- Relocatable Restart and Static Restart services to support:
- 4 HP9000 – Breast Screening, Patient Management and Renal systems
- 4 SUN SureFire 280R – Universal Information Distributor system
- 4 SUN Enterprise 450 – Clinical Results Reporting system
- 4 SUN Enterprise 450 – Finance system
- 4 IBM AIX - Pathology and Pharmacy
The University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust manages three major hospitals, serving a population of more than a million. Established in 1992, it is now one of the largest hospital trusts in central England and employs 6,500 staff. The Trust’s mission is to provide a wide range of acute and specialist services and is recognised both nationally and internationally for its role in developing new treatments.
Meeting its mission
Part of the Trust’s mission is to continually improve both organisational effectiveness and clinical services, and it is increasingly reliant on IT to deliver this. It is therefore essential that the IT department can ensure that quality data is available 24/7, while maintaining patient confidentiality.
“While good quality patient care doesn’t rely on an IT system in the short term, access to technology is now core to the Trust’s ability to provide a high quality service. Doctors need data to do their job effectively and technologies such as CT scanners enable better diagnosis and treatment,” said the IT manager at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.
Computer and Network Services (CNS) manages the IT infrastructure with a dedicated Response Centre, a small team of Technical Service Managers who provide System Administration roles for all the servers and a team of engineers providing end-user support.
CNS recognised that it was essential to protect the electronic data that the hospital now relied on and approached five business continuity providers to tender for the work. The Trust chose SunGard Availability Services as it had proven experience with 175 other NHS trusts and was the only company that had a connection to the NHS Net Connection System, a secure information network that is shared by all trusts across the UK. SunGard also demonstrated the best value, which was important to the Trust, as part of its mission is to provide services at a cost and level that compares favourably with the rest of the NHS.
"Five business continuity providers were approached and three were short-listed. However, SunGard proved the best in terms of relevant experience and was able to offer its services at the best price. Other NHS organisations were contacted before making a final decision and the feedback we received on SunGard was excellent."
The Trust identified to SunGard the most critical clinical and administrative systems, as well as the hardware and operating systems that run them. SunGard supports these platforms so that should any of the systems fail, the hardware will be quickly replaced and data recovered onto the new equipment, to allow access to essential information as soon as possible. Systems supported include Breast Screening, Pathology, Pharmacy, Renal, Clinical Results Reporting, Patient Management and Finance.
“SunGard makes sure that all of our key clinical systems are always available to support staff in delivering excellent patient service. It reduces the pressure on CNS as we know we can rely on SunGard to help us get the systems back up and running quickly and deliver on our promises, both as a department and the Trust as a whole,” continued the IT manager.
Testing times
The Trust tests its Disaster Recovery Plan at least once a year. SunGard works with the IT department to check that any changes made to the system, such as software or hardware upgrades, are accounted for in the Business Continuity Plan. This ensures that any system recovery is not adversely affected should the Trust invoke.
The benefits of testing the system have been proven by the Trust. In the past tests have highlighted problems that might have had significant consequences if they went unchecked. For example, during one test it became apparent that some backup tape cartridges were faulty. SunGard replaced the tape drives on site and completed a full system and data back up, without any data loss within 1 working day.
“If an organisation tests its business continuity strategy and the results are 100 per cent, they must be kidding themselves. The very nature of IT means it is essential to test systems regularly in a controlled environment to identify any problems and rectify them so that everything works smoothly during an invocation,” said the IT manager. “Testing is an opportunity for us to learn and change procedures to increase the effectiveness of our disaster recovery process. Without testing we would have no idea how long it would take to restore any system that goes down. If we ever have to invoke, we know what we are up against and can plan effectively for a real situation.”
Maxim: Treat any shortcomings from Test Days as positive. You’ve found a weakness in your Disaster Recovery procedures!
Invocation in action
The Trust has only experienced two system problems that have caused it to invoke the business continuity plan. However, due to the swift action of both the Trust’s IT team and SunGard, systems were recovered quickly with little interruption to data availability.
When a disc failed, causing a system crash, the hardware providers were called on site to rectify the problem. As they were unable to repair the fault, the IT department decided to invoke. SunGard took a replacement machine to site and restored the system, which continued to run on SunGard’s equipment for several weeks until the hardware provider was able to repair the original kit.
The second invocation occurred when the IT team anticipated there might be some problems with the physical relocation of hardware during a departmental move and it alerted the SunGard team. The IT team’s foresight paid-off as after the equipment had been moved there were boot problems. The maintenance provider was unable to fix the fault in a short period of time, so the Trust invoked. SunGard took a replacement RS/6000 to the site and quickly restored the system that supported the Pharmacy department.
“If we couldn’t access computerised systems in the long term it would put the Trust back 20 years. As the departments share systems that interchange patient information, any downtime could break the link and relying on manual processes is not a popular alternative! With SunGard’s help we can identify system problems before they happen and recover quickly if we do experience any downtime. Our work with SunGard ensures we can meet many of our objectives and continue to deliver an effective service to both our patients and staff,” concluded the hospital’s IT Manager.