The Future Of IT Management In Health Care

The ‘NHS Long Term Plan’ aims to make the NHS fit for the future. A large part of this is the Digital Transformation which promises to “Give health and care staff the technology they need to help them complete administrative tasks more quickly, freeing up time to spend with patients”

These plans recognise the importance of updating old paper-based offices, making best use of existing technology and the management infrastructure around those systems, and how the staff and teams work together in providing world class health care.

This all allows IT services to work smarter and not harder

IT Services and Asset Management

The mammoth task of ensuring the thousands of separate entities in the health care system can keep connected and communicating falls on IT management services. It is a huge task that requires complicated data flows and a work force to support it.

With management systems often underfunded and overloaded, creating efficiency for IT and asset management is one of the simplest places to make time and money savings.

Self Service lockers allow remote management and monitoring of devices. Run updates remotely while devices are charging and stored, without interrupting user or engineering time. This also reduces the need for engineers to make so many on-site visits.

LapSafe® Self-Service Loan Lockers are the most sophisticated and intelligent self-service system in which loan devices or locker bays can be utilised 24 x 7 without staff interaction.

Fully charged devices such as laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets can be loaned to borrowers, whilst the asset is tracked and kept up-to-date with data and updates remotely.

How Self-Service Helps Health Care Management

Mobile, Remote, and Satellite Staff

Embracing hot-desking and sharing IT devices between staff allows establishments to save time and money. Specialist staff often share their time between organisations and have to spend time traveling back to base to have devices monitored, meaning hours of traveling and waiting for IT technicians to run updates. Having a bank of lockers with devices that can be remotely accessed and updated would eliminate the need for transporting laptops back and forth simply to run an update.

A Prescribing Technician who works between several GP Surgeries currently spends time traveling back to base and waiting to have their laptop checked and updated. With a bank of Self-Service lockers they could access laptops at their convenience and would save time having to meet face to face with IT technicians.

Home Visits

Patient-facing staff who need to make home visits, such as secondary care or district nursing, need to take devices out with them. A District Nurse could borrow a fully charged laptop at the beginning of their shift, use it throughout their rounds and return it to the lockers at the end of the day. This laptop can then be remotely updated, charged, and ready for the next member of staff to borrow. 

Security and Peace of Mind

Having the devices on-site in a secure charging locker offers security as devices are safely stored and assets can be tracked. This gives pease of mind to the staff, security to employers and ease of management for IT Services.

GP Surgeries

As of 2021 “an estimated 86% of GP surgeries are now offering online consultations and 93% are offering video consultations with health professionals” and the government is promising to increase this proportion.

To manage this efficiently means better tracking of assets will be required on a local level. At the moment members of staff are allocated personal devices, which all need managing, updating and tracking individually, managing this on a user-by-user basis is a nightmare. Hours of staff time can be wasted just waiting for IT engineers to attend to mend faults and run updates, when realistically this could be automated by using Self-Service Locker solutions.

In larger Clinics and Hospitals

Clinical staff working in shifts can share devices from one bank of Self-Service Lockers eliminating the need to issue each staff member with an individual device. Keeping the devices on-site means they are safe, secure and easy to manage with less chance of loss or damage whilst travelling (or at home) and device use can be closely monitored.

Emergency services

For Emergency service staff who require quick access to a device at the beginning of their shifts, Self-Service is an ideal solution.

Self-service device loans eliminate the need for someone to ‘check-out and check-in’ devices. Staff can access devices themselves from the Self-Service lockers streamlining the borrowing process.

LapSafe® are proud to have assisted the London Ambulance Service during the 2020 pandemic to issue devices to frontline workers without the need for staff interaction. The London Ambulance Service have over twenty sites using the LapSafe® Diplomat™ Self-Service Lockers, helping them reduce unnecessary face-to-face interactions by allowing staff to access a locker, borrow and return a device themselves at any time of day or night.

Self-Service For Health Care

Self-Service for health care is all about providing staff with access to a fully charged device whenever and wherever they need it.

This allows IT management to work more efficiently and provide the systems and technology that are the backbone of modern health care services.

It means helping administrative staff work efficiently, whether in offices or whilst moving between sites, allowing them to support clinical staff to provide the best care possible.

It also means allowing clinical and patient-facing staff to have access to the data they need to provide life-saving care.

If you would like to know more about how self-service device loans can help your organisation then visit or call 0800 130 3456 today. We are waiting for your call.

Sources

• The Government's 2021-22 mandate to NHS England and NHS Improvement – Department of Health and Social Care
• Long Term Plan
• NHS