Solent NHS Trust selects Exponential-e as a key technology partner

Solent NHS Trust – a leading provider of community, mental health, and learning disability services – has approximately 6,000 staff that operate across 120 sites and has an annual income of over £255 million. The Trust's services are provided across a wide geographical area, covering Portsmouth, Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire. Services cover sites such as community hospitals and outpatient environments, as well as other community settings, such as health centres, children's centres, and within people's homes.

In 2021, noting the expiry of its current outsourced contract, the Trust made the decision to go out to tender in order to select a new group of technology partners to support a full revamp of their legacy IT infrastructure. Beyond the replacement of outdated hardware, this represented an opportunity for the Trust to develop a new operating model that would not only be fully optimised for the current healthcare landscape, but also offer ample room to scale and evolve in the future.

Following a rigorous tender process – focusing on candidates' technical capabilities and geographical reach, experience with the healthcare sector's singular compliance, governance, data protection challenges, responsiveness, and proactivity when it came to patient needs – Exponential-e were selected to support the delivery of:

Agile IT support, providing service desk and full life cycle end-user device management, freeing end users to focus on patient care

Modern, reliable end user devices (laptops etc.) that support remote working and increase productivity for the Trust's entire workforce

A seamless IT experience, allowing a mobile workforce, operating across all its locations, to move effortlessly between sites and devices, with associated IT service management tool sets

Effective technology change programmes, to ensure staff, end users, and patients enjoy the full range of available benefits

Critical to this new partnership is the close cultural fit between both organisations – something that became readily apparent throughout the tender process. In particular, the Trust's HEART values resonated especially strongly with the team at Exponential-e, who saw a close parallel with their own company culture – something that helped both teams quickly form a strong rapport.

As Afshin Attari, Director of Public Sector & Unified Platforms at Exponential-e, commented:

"It's an exciting period for the healthcare sector as a whole, with the higher adaption of new digital technology and ways of working. There is clear opportunity to make more effective use of data and digital technology by providing staff with better access to digital tools and patient records, and by bringing improvements to the planning and delivery of services, based on the analysis of patient and population data. It's partnerships like the one between Solent and Exponential-e that are keeping this momentum going, ensuring technological innovation is always in the service of patient care."

Andrew Strevens, Chief Executive Officer at Solent NHS Trust, elaborated:

"Exponential-e's experience in healthcare technology made them a strong potential partner, but it was their willingness to understand where we were, where we wanted to be, and – most importantly – their willingness to tackle any associated ICT challenges head-on. It has been exciting to see the level of engagement across every area of this project from teams at both companies, and I look forward to continuing our work together."

Over the course of the next six months, Exponential-e will manage the migration process, ensuring this does not create any disruption to the Trust's day-to-day operations, with dedicated account, service delivery, and operations teams working closely with internal teams and those from across the partner ecosystem to deliver an effective deployment. The teams from Exponential-e will be on-hand throughout this process and beyond, ensuring staff across all sites are properly supported and able to make use of these new tools straight away.

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