Vistorm provides IT security support to Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

(27/11/2006)

Vistorm has announced an ongoing technical project management, consultancy and support contract with Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. Through working with Vistorm, the Trust's remote and nomadic workers will now benefit from improved speed, security and performance when accessing the hospital's services to retrieve vital information, due to the implementation of a new Citrix Client Access Gateway and Advanced Access Server solution.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust was formed in April 2001 and is one of Europe's largest mental health and learning disability Trusts. The Trust manages services from community settings through acute wards and low, medium and high secure units, including Wathwood Hospital in Rotherham, Arnold Lodge in Leicester and Rampton Hospital near Retford. The Trust employs 6,500 staff and has more than 130 remote WAN connected sites.

Steve Wilkes, systems manager with Nottinghamshire Healthcare, explained: "We already had a well utilised Citrix Farm to deliver applications to our remote users but when we merged we recognised that we needed a more flexible support arrangement as the ratio of users to IT staff was greatly increased."

After researching the market, the Trust selected Vistorm to provide support and implementation of further Citrix solutions.

Wilkes continued: "Vistorm were friendly, adaptable, and took time to understand our issues and were able to provide solutions at a realistic price. The Citrix solution in effect gives staff 'long fingers'. They can work as if they are in the server room itself, rather than miles away. Speed of access is increased and so is performance."

The secure access solution means that service users will benefit in the long run. For example staff will be able to access, and importantly update patient records at the time of their appointments rather than waiting until the end of the day or week before "catching up with their paperwork", which ensures that patient cases will be dealt with more speedily and efficiently.

Wilkes continued: "Vistorm's technical knowledge and support continues to be a real gain, as it helps to relieve the pain of implementing new solutions with a small team. We have a great working relationship with Vistorm they are our single point of contact for supporting many of our solutions, which makes life much simpler. The world of IT is complex enough so reducing complication is a real benefit".

Darron Antill, general manager, Vistorm said: "Remote workers now make up a significant proportion of the public sector workforce and in order to make this a viable working practice, applications need to be secure and accessed simply from a wide range of locations. Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is a great example of a Trust using technology to benefit everyone, not only users but patients too."

Vistorm have also partnered with the Trust in the implementation of a PC client management application, email and web filtering products, recommending a range of product vendors to the Trust.

Vistorm believes that a clear information assurance strategy is fundamental. It encourages businesses to have an overview of their people, processes, technology and compliance. This strategic, top-down approach will enable them to identify actions that will reduce risk across the business. Vistorm can assess a company's Information Assurance challenges, and recommend the best strategy to enable it to exploit and defend its information capital in the optimum way.

Related topics:  IT Network and Computer Security   Security market sectors 

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