Connecting to care: NHS Wales delivers healthcare innovation with the help of Microsoft 365

The agile response of Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust to COVID-19 represents a wider transformation at work across the Welsh healthcare system, known as NHS Wales. Helen Thomas, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Health and Care Wales, is at the forefront of that change. “Digital Health and Care Wales is a relatively new organization. Our role is to lead the national digital transformation for the NHS in Wales,” she says. “We’re about using technology and person-centric data to deliver better care and outcomes for the people of Wales.”

As NHS Wales tackles the legacy of COVID-19 and modernizes its care delivery, the organization is using Microsoft 365 as part of its vision for the future of healthcare. “Maximizing the opportunity that we have with the Microsoft 365 stack is part of our strategy for the future,” says Thomas.

Providing time-sensitive consultations with Teams

One innovative use of Teams is already underway at hospitals across South Wales, with potentially life-saving implications for patients. A recent collaboration between the UK Space Agency, Tactical Wireless, and NHS Wales developed the ability to transmit neonatal ultrasound scans from hospitals directly to pediatric cardiologist consultants using satellite connectivity.

“Specialist consultants used to travel to hospitals to view scans,” says David Rawlinson, Clinical Informatics and Research Manager at Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS) Wales. “Today, those consultants view high-resolution scans in Teams to give live feedback to colleagues all over the country.”

The ability to view scans remotely accelerates patient care. Peter Morton, Managing Director at Tactical Wireless, helped deliver the device that transmits data between hospitals and remote consultants. “Our streaming technology integrates with a variety of platforms, and Teams was up to the challenge of displaying high-quality images,” he says. “In addition to transmitting the data, Teams is used for simultaneous conference calls that enable consultants to gain context about the images they’re seeing.” Adds Rawlinson, “Neonatal scans require a very high resolution, and Teams reliably provides diagnostic-quality images.”

Building a contact-tracing system with Dynamics 365 and Teams

Creating a nationwide track and trace program was one of the first challenges that Thomas and her team faced at the outset of COVID-19. Thomas gathered the team of experts from across NHS Wales to perform market analysis and find the right solution.

“We chose Dynamics 365 for our Test, Trace, Protect program because of its flexibility and the developmental support that Microsoft offered,” says Thomas. “Microsoft understood that the situation was evolving by the hour and was with us every step of the way.”

Today, 30 organizations across NHS Wales use the solution. “We have data flowing into the Dynamics 365 solution that contact tracers use to follow up and provide advice to individuals who need to isolate,” says Thomas.

Deploying the solution required input from geographically dispersed stakeholders who used Teams to collaborate. “People worked nonstop on this system,” remembers Thomas. “We had training sessions with 150 participants at a time and countless checkpoint meetings, all in Teams.”

Saving travel time by using Teams for collaboration and remote training

For NHS Wales employees, traveling long distances for meetings with colleagues had become the norm. And for leaders at EMRTS, an air ambulance service that brings doctors directly to injured patients, some meetings necessitated overnight trips. “It’s a five-hour drive between the two farthest EMRTS bases,” says Rawlinson. “Today, we use Teams for clinical governance meetings and urgent multidisciplinary meetings—all remotely.”

All urgent meetings among NHS employees and external parties, such as social services or police organizations, are now conducted in Teams. “When we need to respond quickly to safeguarding concerns, we use Teams meetings to bring different roles together in a highly secure environment,” says Rawlinson, who notes that Teams is an improvement over previous solutions. “In the past, we used competitors and found that participants were getting kicked out of the meetings regularly. A Teams meeting is a huge improvement.”

EMRTS is also using Teams for remote instruction. “Continuing staff training and posting placements for doctors, nurses, and paramedics was difficult while we were dealing with COVID-19 restrictions,” says Rawlinson. “That’s where Teams really excelled. We quickly transitioned from in-person to virtual training and continued professional development for our staff.”

By conducting training using Teams live events, a broader range of experts can teach sessions and more participants can join. Staff like using the chat function and screen-sharing capabilities in Teams to enhance the teaching experience. “We were unable to stream video with our previous solutions because of bandwidth issues,” says Rawlinson. “With Teams live events, we have more engagement with chat, and we use Microsoft Forms to get feedback after a session.”

Bringing care to communities with Teams

While still confronting the challenges brought by COVID-19, health agencies in Wales are taking a leadership role in evolving digital care delivery to their communities. Today, Teams is used to support the delivery of care in rural communities. “With Microsoft 365, we’re working more collaboratively and delivering more healthcare locally,” says Claire Osmundsen-Little, Director of Finance at Digital Health and Care Wales. “Previously, we didn’t have the information, diagnostics, and collaboration at our fingertips like we do today with Microsoft tools.”

In one case, geographically dispersed experts used Teams to share information and discuss outcomes for a group of patients. “In the past, stakeholders had to travel for most of the day to attend in-person meetings,” says Osmundsen-Little. “Today, they connect digitally in Teams, so meetings can be held more frequently, and information can be shared more quickly. That has a direct, positive effect on patient care.”

Harnessing data-driven insights for improved patient care with Power BI

For Digital Health and Care Wales, the organization tasked with leading the digital transformation at NHS Wales, using data to improve care is a crucial part of the organization’s mandate. Microsoft Power BI is part of the organization’s data-driven vision. “Digital Health and Care Wales now use Power BI to present monthly reporting for budget holders,” says Osmundsen-Little. “The interactive, visual presentation is really exciting, and we’re looking into mobile alerts to let people know when they’re close to going over budget.”

Rawlinson and his colleagues at EMRTS are also using Power BI to help aircraft operators improve response times. “We provide our aviation partners with automated Power BI reports to help gain insights and improve timeliness,” says Rawlinson. EMRTS and its aviation partners review the dashboards during twice-weekly Teams meetings. In the past, Rawlinson spent seven hours a week compiling reports manually. “Now, all that happens in the background with automated reporting,” he says.

Embracing Power BI helps EMRTS save on costs. “We saved a significant amount of money by eliminating other data analytics solutions and consolidating on Power BI,” says Rawlinson. And the South Wales Trauma Network uses Forms and Power BI to gather information on hospital performance. “The hospitals fill out a Forms survey daily, and that information is automatically pulled into a Power BI report for stakeholders,” he adds.

NHS employees also use Power BI to help visualize information about patient outcomes. “Power BI dashboards help us compare patient-reported outcomes against clinical outcomes, so we gain a better understanding of which treatment choices work best,” says Thomas. “Providing data in an easy-to-understand format for patients is going to be a key part of how we improve care at NHS Wales.”

Enabling anywhere access to information with highly secure Microsoft tools

For any healthcare system, security and compliance are top concerns. “We have a duty of care to ensure that any personally identifiable information is secure to maintain the privacy and security of NHS Wales patients’ data,” says Thomas. “I think identity is the pillar of security.”

Remote work during COVID-19 underscored the importance of identity management at NHS Wales, in addition to device and app management. “There was a realization within NHS Wales that Microsoft Azure Active Directory, particularly Conditional Access, could help get employees working from home without the need for VPN tokens,” says Johnathan Hughes, Product Specialist at Digital Health & Care Wales.

“Because these devices aren’t necessarily connected to the NHS network at all times, we need to enable employees to work outside of the trusted network, we embraced Microsoft Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Endpoint Manager to enable employees to work securely outside of the trusted network,” adds Thomas. “There are security and cost benefits to moving to Microsoft 365 and embracing security solutions like Azure Active Directory and Endpoint Manager. Today, we have 65,000 devices that are registered in Microsoft Intune, a component of Endpoint Manager, and we implemented multifactor authentication and Microsoft Authenticator to authenticate employees who are working remotely.”

Rawlinson has also noticed that moving to the cloud helps reduce shadow IT. “By working in the cloud and using security measures like multifactor authentication, employees can now access information on their personal devices in a highly secure manner,” he says. “Making it easy to access Microsoft 365 apps and services securely on their devices encourages employees not to use workarounds and personal email accounts to communicate, which gives us confidence that they’re less likely to cause a breach in confidentiality.”

Leading the way for digitally driven patient care and modern ways of working

From a fragmented collaboration landscape and heavy reliance on travel and in-person meetings, NHS Wales has emerged from COVID-19 as a more streamlined and connected organization. For Thomas, who helped launch Digital Health and Care Wales from her home office, a hybrid work environment is key to the future of work at NHS. “Today, everyone can use Microsoft 365 tools to work from home—and in some ways deliver more productive services than ever before,” she says.

NHS Wales uses Microsoft 365 to support the organization’s mission to provide the best possible healthcare by modernizing how people work. “Embracing digital solutions has been a wonderful enabler of change and helps us think more boldly about how to use technology to better deliver healthcare to the people of Wales,” says Osmundsen-Little. “The work we’ve done with Microsoft is a great example of that.”

Find out more about NHS Wales on Twitter and LinkedIn.