Belfast City Hospital Ensures Patient Records are Always Available with Marathon Technologies
THE COMPANY
One in three people will develop some form of cancer in their life and one in four deaths in Northern Ireland are cancer related. Cancer services (diagnosis, treatment & care) in Northern Ireland have recently benefited from a substantial public investment with the creation of a new Cancer Centre at Belfast City Hospital. Opened in March 2006 Belfast City Hospital’s Oncology Centre went live as the Regional Centre of Excellence in the treatment of cancer across Northern Ireland.
“It is unthinkable what we would be up against without this system in place. We transferred all the users on to the system over a weekend period; in the space of a week, the system proved its worth.”
THE PROBLEM
For the IT department, the key challenge behind this was the provision of a system that was accessible by all the cancer units 24*7, throughout Northern Ireland, so it was imperative that a secure reliable solution was implemented, that could be easily updated in real time.
RTSL were appointed by Belfast City Hospital to design and implement a state of the art IT solution with patient care remaining at the core of the system design. RTSL, Carryduff based IT solutions provider, devised and implemented a robust system using the Marathon systems solution.
THE SOLUTION
Philip Leighton, Senior Systems Specialist, Belfast City Hospital explained, “RTSL were able to design an IT system accommodating all the different functions we needed the system to carry out. A dedicated team of IT specialists took our initial brief and created a solution which fitted into the current infrastructure, ensuring that it was robust and reliable 24*7 as well as providing continuity of information at all stages of the implementation process. Since then their state of the art system has gone from strength to strength and has not experienced any unscheduled downtime in the time it has been implemented. It’s a rarity to install a system that can be left to run on its own with little need for interference from our team and this is testimony to the expertise of RTSL.”
In March 2006, RTSL were again employed by Belfast City Hospital to make further recommendations on how to upgrade and improve the IT system. A ‘Marathon split site’ solution was installed which ensured that should something happen to the systems on one site, users will have access to the systems on another site, without interruption.
THE RESULTS
For Belfast City Hospital their partnership with Real Time Systems Ltd, has grown from strength to strength. For them, they know that they have a team that they can rely on. As Philip Leighton says, “It is unthinkable what we would be up against without this system in place. We transferred all the users on to the system over a weekend period; in the space of a week, the system proved its worth.”
For Belfast City Hospital, it doesn’t end there; they have plans to move more of their systems over to Marathon systems in the long term. It has proven to be a cost effective value rich investment.
The main beneficiaries are the patients, as patient care was at the core of the systems design. As part of an overall investment this system has seen to it that all the information on a patient, their diagnosis, treatment and progress can be accessed from any of the cancer units throughout Northern Ireland, and plays a paramount role in the advancement of treatments against cancer.
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