Wraparound support
From a quick fix to a long-term objective, our work for the ICB covering Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield ensure smooth day-to-day operations and provides IT foresight, planning and execution throughout hundreds of GP surgeries, clinics and other healthcare services.
We provide the ICB with 16 service lines that cover every aspect of what THIS excels at thanks to our experts’ deep understanding of the NHS, its people, values, systems and structures.
And knowing that GPs and AHPs face constant challenges, our innovative, collaborative approach on IT developments to improve patient services is now more important than ever.
Service desk and Silver Service support
The most common touchpoint for those working within the ICB is our service desk team, who offer a highly experienced, trusted and efficient single point of contact.
This covers three service lines, which are:
- Log all incidents and requests via a call or our online portal.
- Provide a first-time fix.
- Provide a resolution.
As part of the first-time fix service our skilled service analysts triage, prioritise and resolve incidents, providing IT guidance, password resets and progressing more specialised fulfilment requests to the appropriate team.
Our service desk analysts resolve on average 75% of incidents reported at first point of contact, using industry-standard secure remote software and access tools, including THIS Connect, a remote support application used by our service desk to provide efficient and secure assistance to our clients.
By the caller granting our analysts/technicians remote access to their computer, we can visually diagnose issues, troubleshoot problems, and guide users through solutions in real-time. This not only saves time but also enhances the overall support experience.
Silver Service
Our Silver Service provision provides the ICB with a more bespoke, proactive offering that includes a dedicated team leader and five whole time equivalents (WTEs) who:
- Give IT help, advice and training (where necessary)
- Discuss IT improvements or enhancements.
Our Silver Service covers internal IT resources and skills, using our experience and expertise as required to resolve any issues on site, or identify any potential issues that can be addressed before they become a problem.
Our dedicated technicians integrate with the wider IT support process and compliment other third-party IT support agreements.
Praise for our Silver Service
“Just to say a BIG THANK YOU for all your help with the computer move and additional re-routing of all the printer settings for the admin team, and everything else going the extra mile! Really appreciated.”
IT Manager, GP Practice, Calderdale GPs
Discover more about our service desk and silver service support.
Infrastructure services
Infrastructure services are two more elements of our provision for the ICB, supporting its servers at our on-site, fire suppressed data centre, which has multiple power, air-conditioned cooling and other back-up systems in place allowing it to be updated and maintained without taking it offline.
It is managed by our highly experienced team, which includes a back-up and storage architect. We ensure that all system storage, email archiving and file recovery are managed securely, consistently and reliably.
We also host the ICB’s Serious Incident and Risk Register databases.
Get in touch to discuss how we can provide data centre infrastructure and management.
Network (LAN) support
This includes:
- Approximately 7,000, laptops, PCs, devices connected to our network.
- Remote access by AnyConnect to 1,000 user licenses.
- IT security services – encryption, anti-virus, network monitoring, web filtering and mobile control (support and license).
- PKI certificates service.
- Wi-fi access.
Learn more about our network support services and how they can benefit your organisation.
Registration Authority support
Our Registration Authority (RA) service provides secure and efficient access to national systems for healthcare teams and operates to NHS England’s National Operational Process and Guidance. We undertake full management and administration of the RA process to grant appropriate access to individuals which involves the issue and support for smartcards.
Our service for the ICB’s GP practices covers smartcards already registered. Other services, such as setting up new smartcards and permissions are captured either as a service call, or as a work request with an associated task.
Our RA service is run by a team of experienced RA agents and led by the Registration Authority Manager. All members of the RA service have extensive experience of supporting organisations like the ICB with their RA requirements.
Our Registration Authority - NHS Spine & Healthcare IT Integration – service currently supports over 400 customer organisations. Find out we could support yours.
Cyber security
THIS is the only NHS informatics service to hold three ISO standards relating to cyber security and data protection:
- ISO 27001 Information Security Management.
- 9001 Cyber Management
- 20000-1 Information Technology Service Management.
We are compliant with the NHS England Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), and our cyber security training is NHS England mandated – all of which is used to protect the ICB’s systems and its users.
We also have accreditation to provide training on all aspects of threat containment and secure email compliance through NHS England’s secure email standard DCB1596 certification that ensures sensitive and confidential information is kept secure.
This forms another element of our support for this client, which has approximately 4,500 NHS email accounts which we administrate on behalf of the ICB and the GP practices within their remit.
If you think we could support your organisation, regardless of size and complexity, contact us to discuss your requirements.
Project and change management
We have a successful history of NHS project management that includes technical orientated projects, complex clinical system implementations and optimisations across health and social care settings.
We provide agreed governance for programmes and projects to ensure there is a framework where decisions and key deliverables are managed, and roles and responsibilities clearly defined – delivering projects for the ICB from planning to completion.
We produce and maintain all documentation to monitor the project and programme performance to ensure we deliver projects on time, to budget, with minimum risk.
One of the most recent projects we have completed for this client is the installation of new WAP and switches to upgrade to a new Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) wi-fi system.
This was implemented by Chris Ibbotson from Networks and Ed Nolan, Project Management, who led the project.
Here is some of the feedback we received to describe the implementation and overall experience:
“Good, clear, organised, positive attitude, faster than expected, ahead of schedule, good comms, and seamless”
Another project that has come to fruition is a two-year SharePoint implementation for the ICB, including full training, enabling its various sites to use it for document storage.
This collaboration included another element of our support, that of a Microsoft 365 specialist – in this case Daniel Wilson - who worked with one of our projects and change management experts, Craig Fletcher.
Other projects have included an iQA server migration to replace hardware coming to the end of its life. We migrated it onto virtual servers hosted in the CHFT environment and closed down the old servers once the migration was complete.
We have delivered, installed and set live thermal printers in GP surgeries in the Wakefield and north Kirklees areas to facilitate the printing of labels for pathology and cytology service into Mid-Yorkshire Teaching Hospital Trust.
And we are currently upgrading 7,000 desktop PCs and laptops using Windows 10 to Windows 11, replacing 700 ageing desktop PCs in the process – a project due to complete at the end of 2025.
We have a successful history in the implementation of a diverse portfolio of projects and programmes. Get in touch to see if we can benefit your organisation.
Technical support expertise
Our wraparound maintenance for the ICB features significant day-to-day and proactive support that covers various lines of expertise, some of it business as usual and some on the basis of an agreed number of days as part of a service level agreement. It includes:
- One whole time equivalent IT manager.
- Cyber security and NHS mail account experts.
- Microsoft 365 development and support.
- Technical support for projects.
- Clinical and non-clinical application training.
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