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July 23, 2020

Surface, Microsoft 365 and Teams transform the way healthcare teams work

Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest mental health and disability Trusts in England. It employs more than 7,000 staff, who provide services across an area totalling 4,800 square miles and a population of approximately 1.7 million.

Cumbria Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

Like many healthcare providers, the Trust has faced huge disruption in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Darren McKenna is the Director of Informatics at Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust. He says, “Over the last couple of months the organisation has really changed how it’s worked and how it’s delivered its services and that wouldn’t have been possible without Microsoft Teams.”

From cost efficiencies to coping in a pandemic

Initially, the Trust invested in Microsoft Teams to explore how much of the time and expense of the four million miles travelled by staff each year could be saved. 

When COVID-19 struck, the Trust knew that Teams had the potential to play a greater role. Dr Rajesh Nadkarni is the Executive Medical Director at Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust. He explains the priority was to ensure people remained safe and that services were delivered to the same high standard in spite of the restrictions.

Nadkarni says, “We needed solutions quickly. We needed to gather a lot of people, get them together, deal with the situation and make a decision which would be in the best interest of our patients and families.”

Virtual Teams enable virtual service delivery

The priority for staff was to be able to deliver services to patients. Kirsty Charlton is the Clinical Manager of the Trust’s Autism Services. All the scheduled events her team delivered were immediately impacted by the lockdown.

McKenna explains that Teams offered a rapid solution: “We knew the technology could help us continue to keep these staff working, even if they were having to isolate of shield themselves and continue to provide those services to our patients.”

Surface & Teams

The Trust installed Surface Hub 2S as all-in-one digital whiteboards in a number of locations and wards, so that communities could be kept in contact with frontline services. Remote workers used Surface Go 2 as a lightweight laptop with tablet functionality. For these workers, its Surface Pen capabilities were a very convenient way of capturing information when working remotely.

Staff used Microsoft Teams to communicate with patients and with each other. Since the pandemic began, the Trust has been conducting around 1,100 meetings per day on Microsoft Teams. 

McKenna says, “We’ve been running Microsoft Teams live events and they’ve gone down really well with staff. We run them as question and answer sessions, so our staff get the opportunity to ask our executives anything. I think they will definitely be here to stay, even when COVID eventually goes away.”

A new way of working

“The main impact of the Teams, Surface Hubs collaboration, the whole thing, during COVID is just the ability for staff to carry on working – providing amazing care to the patients at the standard they are used to,” says Revell Cornell, Infrastructure Manager at Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.

“The message just become clear the calls have been working so well that no matter what happened going forward, or how long the situation lasted, meetings were never going to return to the way they were.”

“The message just become clear the calls have been working so well that no matter what happened going forward, or how long the situation lasted, meetings were never going to return to the way they were.”

Revell Cornell, Infrastructure Manager, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

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