Insights

The most common touchpoint for those working within Spectrum is our NHS-accredited service desk team, who offer a highly experienced, trusted and efficient single point of contact that staff can use to report a problem, ask for a new service, or changes to an existing service, and request an upgrade to the existing IT infrastructure.

Our service desk support operates 8am-6pm Monday to Friday, except for public and bank holidays, and outside of those times a system is in place for support requests to be logged and attended to the next working day. 

This is how we classify our service desk responsibilities:

• Incident detection and recording.
• Classification of all incidents, and initial support.
• Investigation and diagnosis.
• Resolution and recovery.
• Monitoring and tracking.
• Incident closure

All incidents and requests are categorised as either critical, high, medium or low. An incident is classed as critical when patient care is compromised and for an incident to be treated as high priority is where there is any other loss of clinical functions for any clinical users, e.g. prescriptions, data entry, referrals, appointments.

We also provide a first-time fix service, where our skilled service analysts triage, prioritise and resolve incidents, provide IT guidance, password resets and send 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.

Discover more about our service desk support.

Server support

We monitor the performance and capacity of Spectrum’s servers undertaking preventative maintenance and making recommendations for improving servers.

We make sure all systems are compliant with NHS Digital and any other relevant local and/or national security standards and make recommendations to Spectrum where that’s not the case.

We undertake minor infrastructure upgrades, such as software or hardware patches, additional memory etc, agreeing pre-arranged maintenance windows to allow this work to be done.

We maintain an anti-virus solution which protects from known viruses that may affect the server infrastructure, and we alert Spectrum if we detect any major threats to the service. And we’ve put a process in place for returning to full service should there be a failure to prevent infection.

The quality measure for this is that supported servers and related IT infrastructure is available for 99.95% of the time, excluding planned and agreed downtime and loss of availability due to failures of the applications, the network or the access devices.

Server storage

Server support and back up form a major part of our work for Spectrum by ensuring pre-agreed data storage capacity is available and maintained within secure and responsive data storage capabilities.

We make sure the data storage is available for 99.95% of the time, except in the cases of planned and agreed downtime and the loss of availability due to the failure of any non-server storage element of the infrastructure.

Our other support includes:

• Removing any duplicate data, therefore reducing disk usage.
• Safeguarding data from double disk failure.
• Providing spare disks to rebuild failed disks.
• Provide active-active controller with controller failover and multi-path high availability storage.

All the server back-ups we provide are done using industry standard technology and follow rigorous audits for data resilience at all times.

In addition, all information is saved to pre-agreed file stores, and all file structures are securely and routinely backed up 24/7 365 days per year.

We do the back-ups each night to disk storage for faster back-up and restore times. Monthly tape back-ups are encrypted for extra security.

Spectrum has 2,692 users on Microsoft 365 and all mailbox, SharePoint and OneDrive information is maintained 24/7, 365 days a year and all back-ups are stored within a secure Azure cloud portal for extra resilience.

Network (LAN) support

Data networks are managed carefully to ensure optimum performance, and we provide an encryption service which blocks any unauthorised devices being written to.

Our network support includes:

• Approximately 1,400 laptops, PCs, devices connected to our network.

• Remote access by Cisco AnyConnect to user licenses. We make sure of secure access via two factor authentication of both the user account and device being identified as having remote access rights.
• IT security services – encryption, anti-virus, network monitoring, web filtering and mobile control (support and license).
• PKI certificates service.
• Wi-fi access.

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 allows Spectrum staff to access the required clinical system units via the use of their smartcard and includes:

• Registering staff on NHS spine.
• Issuing smartcards.
• Applying the appropriate access rights to smartcards.
• Amending access rights as requested.
• Removing access rights as requested.

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

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 Spectrum Community Health CIC 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 Windows 11 across the Specrum CIC estate.

This was led by Project Manager Phil Hughes alongside our Spectrum CIC Account Manager Craig Fletcher.

The upgrade project has shown strong performance against its original objectives and acceptance criteria, with the final upgrade rate reaching 99.71% as of October 2025.

From a starting point of just 180 upgraded devices in November 2024, the project scaled effectively over the following months, culminating in only four devices remaining in need of the upgrade - each with a clear plan for resolution, thus showcasing that the project has met its core goal of ensuring widespread deployment of Windows 11 across the estate.

We encountered several challenges, particularly around device compatibility and technical limitations. A recurring issue was low disk space, with many devices flagged as having under 20GB free storage, requiring manual intervention.

These constraints slowed progress at times but were managed through targeted troubleshooting and prioritisation.

Additionally, software compatibility issues such as printing from ICE and camera problems inc Teams were identified early and resolved through vendor engagement and internal testing, allowing the roll out to continue in clinical areas without disruption. 

Communication and co-ordination with stakeholders, including the Spectrum team and customer leads, played a key role in maintaining momentum.

Device lists were regularly updated, and feedback loops were established to address emerging issues. The project also demonstrated adaptability, with manual upgrades and exception handling integrated into the deployment strategy.

In conclusion, despite some technical hurdles, the project has delivered successfully against its objectives. The near-total upgrade rate, proactive issue resolution, and structured closure process reflect a well-managed and effective deployment. 

While this case study details the day-to-day support we provide for Spectrum, you can read more about our specialist capabilities in our case study entitled Precision planning and teamwork at the core of an against-the-clock prisons project.