 Belfast Royal Hospital About BRHG The Business Problem EIM Solution Feedback About BRHG The wider Belfast Royal Hospitals Group is the biggest and best known hospital complex in Northern Ireland. With approximately two thirds of Northern Ireland’s population living within 40 minutes travel of this 70 acre complex, the centre’s objective of providing the highest possible quality yet cost effective healthcare is of paramount importance. This group of hospitals is at the forefront of advances in treatment and technology. Comprising four linked hospitals – the Royal Victoria, Royal Jubilee Maternity Service, Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and the Dental Hospital – “The Royal” amasses impressive statistics.
Treating around half a million people each year with 6,000 staff, “The Royal” has 20% of all acute beds in Northern Ireland and the complex is undergoing a £74M rebuilding programme while still functioning.
Visitors to the complex cannot fail to notice the massive physical changes taking place, which reflect the commitment to clinical excellence and Best Value.
Investment and innovation places “The Royal” at the leading edge of healthcare. For example the Royal Victoria launched the world’s first mobile coronary care unit and played a major role in the development of the portable heart defribulator.
The Management structure of “The Royal” reflects the crucial commitment to the NHS and the community of Northern Ireland. Devolved responsibility ensures all decisions are made in the best interests of the patients.  Excelpoint takes Belfast's pulse The Business ProblemThe IT Department at the Royal were seeking to extend their business processes in order to deliver enhancement and efficiency in their Support Services. There was also a desire to broaden the use of IT in managing corporate business processes. These goals all deliver cost savings to the NHS and better service to the user community in the Hospital, but the existing support technology was expensive, difficult to extend, and not integrated with other back office systems:
- In line with NHS processes procurement is entirely paper based but this made tracking and using this information extremely difficult.
- The management of assets and overall IT configuration information is considered key to future process efficiency gains but impossible with the current technology.
- Existing support technology was not flexible enough to incorporate changes to this area of corporate responsibility without investing heavily in consultancy services.
- From this position an increasing adoption of the ITIL model was impossible but strategically important.
- The systems manager could not achieve his objective of standardising processes across departments – not only IT.
- Linking a wide variety of technologies used in house seemed to be an impossible barrier to strategic objectives.
 Belfast Royal Complex Easy Information Management Solution The System Services Manager, Paul Duffy, made a decision for EIM immediately following the first meeting and demonstration. Initially requesting that Excelpoint work with the IT Support, Network Comms and Procurement functions, Paul sought a solution to issues around Procurement which provided the IT department with greater flexibility, visibility and could be an integrated element of a wider solution. - The Procurement Manager specified his requirements in order to satisfy existing processes, provide added information to new business process streams but importantly still be manageable with available resources. This element of the solution was configured in one day.
- Working in conjunction with an independent ITIL consultancy Excelpoint designed an Incident management solution, which conforms to ITIL recommendations and also met the Royals requirement. This solution was also provided in a single day.The Incident Management solution mentioned above is integrated to the Royals Microsoft SMS implementation in order that support staff can access up to the minute information about IT assets within the infrastructure – with a single click.
- The Procurement solution also feeds into the IT Support function allowing technicians to see the warranty period, supplier, terms and conditions, associated with any failing hardware.
- Change and Problem Management are already configured and ready for roll-out. EIM offers the capability to design and deploy the solution rapidly therefore more time can be invested in appropriate design of business processes and the solid implementation of these before moving to the next stage. Milestone and targets are achieved rather than slipped.
- Any supporting information that the IT Department could provide was easily imported into EIM or linked to EIM where appropriate without the need for programming or consultancy.
- Other EIM solutions are now being considered soon after implementing the first one.
Feedback “What we needed was “joined up” working between the various sections internally. EIM proved to be the tool to enable our processes and also deliver efficiencies. Between Excelpoint as the vendor and EIM as a technology we are now rapidly making progress with the vision of the department. I see considerable potential for further expansion of the EIM solution internally and the departments are already reviewing processes and feasibility – EIM is an excellent product.” Paul Duffy, Systems Manager, Belfast Royal Hospitals Group |
