A healthy, hybrid cloud

Rackspace Technology reports that the CNWL NHS Foundation Trust leveraged a combination of public, private, and government cloud solutions to address enormous pressure to meet the growing demand for its healthcare services and security for its mounting volume of patient data.

Founded in 2002, the Central and North West London (CNWL) NHS Foundation Trust provides healthcare in London, Milton Keynes, Surrey, and elsewhere. With a staff of over 8,500, it provides over 300 services in 150 locations and 40 partner locations.

Before the pandemic, CNWL partnered with Rackspace Technology to implement a long-term digital transformation project, migrating legacy systems to Rackspace Private cloud and then moving to a multicloud IT environment via Rackspace Government Cloud on Microsoft® Azure®. When COVID-19 hit, the healthcare organization put its transformation plans on hold. It pivoted to focusing on supporting remote work and new models of patient care with the help of its Rackspace Technology team.

“With Rackspace Private Cloud already providing the flexibility, speed, and resilience it needed to bring innovation to its services, CNWL also deployed a public cloud on Microsoft Azure to deliver some of its services,” said Owen Powell, Director of ICT, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust. “To help ensure optimized security for its vast stores of sensitive patient data, Rackspace Technology recommended Rackspace Government Cloud, a fully managed security platform-as-a-service.”

“Cloud services are increasingly crucial to how the NHS delivers its services throughout England,” said D K Sinha, President, Public Cloud Business Unit for Rackspace Technology. “The commitment to the cloud has resulted in the creation of NHS’s Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE), designed to promote best practices and drive the adoption of cloud services throughout its organizations. And CNWL is helping to lead the way.”

Since expanding and optimizing its multicloud infrastructure, CNWL has gained the agility and speed it needs to innovate. Among its innovations is a digital auditing application allowing clinicians to collect data on their phones or computers instead of paper and pen. Another innovation is using QR codes on high-risk medications, allowing patients to watch videos instead of reading instructions.

“There’s always pressure on capacity and change in the NHS,” said Nigel Tazzyman, CNWL’s Deputy Director of ICT. “In our multicloud environment, we can react quickly to those changes. Previously, it would have taken weeks or months to deliver new technologies and infrastructure, and now we can often turn projects around in four to five days. And for the past three years, we’ve reduced our footprint, servers, and workloads by about 20%. And we’ve reduced costs between 15% and 18% just through optimization.”