Bespoke technology solutions for the UK healthcare sector's digital pioneer
About NHS Digital
NHS Digital is the entire UK health and social care system's trusted information and technology partner, utilising innovative solutions to enhance patient care, open new channels of communication, and optimise operational efficiency.
The Challenge
Before partnering with Exponential-e, NHS Digital utilised a number of suppliers for Cloud and WAN services, interconnecting twelve sites and multiple data centres across the UK. In line with the healthcare sector's stringent data protection regulations, all data transmitted between these sites must be encrypted, for which multiple point-to-point networks were utilised - an arrangement that proved incredibly time-consuming and expensive to maintain.
Things were further complicated by NHS Digital's ongoing requirement for bespoke solutions, which suppliers were frequently unable to deliver. Based on the singular nature of the healthcare sector's challenges, off-the-shelf solutions rarely proved suitable, which inevitably had a negative effect on the long-term technology roadmap.
In light of these concerns, NHS Digital made the decision to select a new technology partner who could not only meet their requirements in terms of performance, compliance, and flexibility, but also be an active partner in their long-term digital transformation journey.
Solution
After being introduced to Exponential-e via referral, NHS Digital engaged with them to support their Cloud Connect requirements, providing diverse and resilient connectivity to AWS and Azure public clouds. To manage this initial deployment, a dedicated account team was assigned at Exponential-e, working closely with NHS Digital's own IT teams to ensure the success of the project, provide hands-on support and guidance whenever needed, and enable the design and delivery of bespoke solutions, as required.
Since then, the partnership has continued to evolve, with 2018 seeing NHS Digital begin the deployment of Exponential-e's SD-WAN solution, in order to overcome their connectivity challenges in a changing digital landscape. Following its successful launch, this solution provided NHS Digital's IT teams with maximum control and visibility of their cross-site connectivity, while automating all data encryption and protection processes, removing the resulting drain on internal IT teams' time. The combination of intelligent automation with a 'single pane of glass' view of the entire network and security ecosystem allows NHS Digital Teams to manage traffic by application and by user, ensuring all staff have access to the tools and information they need, wherever they are working from, with consistent performance across all regions and encryption of sensitive data available with a single click via the portal.
The strong rapport that has developed between NHS Digital and their Exponential-e account team since the initial Cloud Connect deployment - along with the inherent flexibility and scalability of the IT infrastructure - helped ensure a smooth transition to remote working for staff in response to COVID-19. Operational efficiency and patient care could be maintained across all regions, with proactive monitoring from Exponential-e's 24 / 7 support team, ensuring any potential issues or security risks could be swiftly detected and resolved.
Entering 2021, the Leeds Government Hub was successfully launched, in line with Government-led initiatives, with high-capacity connectivity delivered by Exponential-e. This provided more than 3,000 staff with the means to maintain operational efficiency and cost control, while NHS Digital and Exponential-e teams continue working closely together to identify any additional opportunities to achieve new cost savings and performance improvements, including the delivery of bespoke solutions, tailored to NHS Digital's unique requirements.
The ongoing success of this partnership paints a clear picture of what can be achieved within the healthcare sector when internal IT teams combine their expertise with that of trusted partners, who are deeply invested in the success of the sector and the different ways in which technological innovations can enhance both operational efficiencies and patient care, across the entire UK.
Solution benefits
- Hands-on support from a dedicated account team, with a deep understanding of the healthcare sector
- Optimal flexibility in terms of design and delivery, allowing solutions to be tailored to highly specific requirements
- Streamlined management of the entire network, with full visibility of all traffic and compliance with applicable regulations
What we like most about Exponential-e is the willingness to do things differently. Our requirements are extremely challenging in that a significant element of customisation is required for virtually every project, but the team always goes the extra mile to deliver the right combination of solutions.
Stuart Meaking
NHS Digital.
Secure, connected infrastructure enabling better patient outcomes and faster clinical innovation.
Discover how UK healthcare organisations are building resilient digital foundations to accelerate diagnosis, connect care, and support frontline teams. Through real-world NHS examples, see how the right infrastructure partner turns transformation into measurable impact.
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Hampshire & IoW 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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The healthcare sector generates higher volumes of patient data on a daily basis than ever before - all of which conceals a rich vein of opportunities to optimise efficiency and enhance patient care. The demand for more efficient diagnosis and more effective management of data has naturally led to the rise of digital pathology and - in turn - the Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) that underpin these initiatives.
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Partnership will help accelerate cancer diagnosis and improve digital pathology for the NHS
Exponential‐e, the leading specialist in connectivity, cloud and unified communications solutions has today announced it has become the strategic platform provider for The National Pathology Imaging Co‐operative (NPIC). Exponential‐e will support NPIC's development of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis and help deliver core technology platforms to support its deployment of digital pathology in the NHS.
NPIC is a unique collaboration between NHS, academia and industry partners and a world‐leading centre for applying AI research to the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases NPIC will deploy digital pathology scanners in a network of over 30 NHS hospitals across England, including fully digitising the pathology labs in 15 hospitals across the North of England. These scanners will support the implementation of digital pathology, enabling pathologist to make diagnoses using the images and develop artificial intelligence tools to assist them. The programme will generate more than 2.4 million images per year, which equates to at least 3 petabytes of data.
NPIC required a market‐leading digital partner to help design, implement, host and manage the centralised service to store the images in high performance systems and ensure a highly responsive user experience for NHS front‐line workers. The public sector procurement governed the selection process led by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. This concluded with Exponential‐e being selected as the chosen delivery partner.
Exponential‐e now provides NPIC with a platform for its centralised picture archiving and communication system (PACS) to sit on. This system will process and store the images in the Dell EMC PowerScale in tandem with the Dell EMC ECS Enterprise Object Storage, enabling them to be retrieved rapidly and shared digitally with doctors and labs, with speed. As part of information lifecycle management the Exponential‐e platform will automatically manage files according to retention periods moving them down to a lower tier of data storage for long‐term retention and to help control the cost of data growth for the programme.
The platform, which will be fully managed by Exponential‐e across two 3‐ tier data centres, and will additionally provide high speed connectivity to hospitals that are partners on the NPIC programme.
Bash Hussain, Deployment Director at NPIC says: "We have achieved a key milestone for the NPIC programme which has significant infrastructure needs for storage and processing of clinical images. Working alongside Exponential‐e will provide the programme with a resilient, scalable platform needed to meet both our clinical and research ambitions."
Jonathan Bridges, Chief Innovation Officer at Exponential‐e adds: "The work that NPIC is doing to improve patient diagnosis with AI and digital pathology is truly revolutionary and we are thrilled to be a part of its ground‐breaking work. Being a chosen partner of this project further validates the deep expertise that Exponential‐e has in the healthcare and life sciences sectors, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what NPIC can achieve over the coming years with our expert, digital support."
As the service evolves, AI platforms will be layered on top of the Exponential‐e platform. This will enable better customer centricity and accelerated patient diagnosis through increased automation. Enabling large scale image comparison, it will also support research and advanced diagnosis and deep learning‐based pattern recognition. Whilst the ability to gather further clinical, radiologic and genomic data will help to accurately diagnose diseases.
Charles Wilce, Sr. Dir. EMEA Sales for Unstructured Data Solutions at Dell Technologies comments: "The combination of Dell EMC PowerScale and Dell EMC ECS object storage with Exponential‐e technology will deliver AI‐driven insight for NPIC to improve both the quality and outcomes of patient treatment. By harnessing this data in the most meaningful ways, we're able to help our customers drive human progress through data insights and technology innovation."
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On the morning of 12th September 2024, the UK Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, pinpointed three 'big shifts' that would be required to transform the NHS:
- From hospital to community care
- From analogue to digital
- From treating sickness to preventing it
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