National Health Service Secret to Delivering a Fully Functional Remote Workspace
April 30, 2021
Established in 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) serves as the public health provider for England, Scotland, and Wales, delivering medical services to over 60 million residents in the UK. With a workforce of 1.6 million employees, it stands as the world’s largest and most venerable single-payer healthcare system.
Amidst the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NHS swiftly transitioned 95 percent of its workforce to remote work. Being the world’s first and most extensive single-payer healthcare system, the NHS comprises 1.6 million staff members and caters to the healthcare needs of over 60 million UK citizens. The NHS urgently required a solution that would allow primary care providers to access patient data on their personal devices without the need for costly VPN connections or hardware purchases, all while minimizing disruptions.
Time was of the essence due to the escalating global and domestic infection rates. Recognizing the critical importance of uninterrupted patient care, the NHS sought innovative solutions.
Within a mere two-week span, Orange Business, the NHS’s partner during this transition, designed a virtual desktop prototype featuring NHS line-of-business applications hosted on VMware Horizon Cloud. Once a secure connection was established, employees could access the virtual desktop using their own devices, which incorporated multi-factor authentication to verify authorized users. The impact of identity management solutions on the cloud user experience cannot be overstated. Login Enterprise’s monitoring capabilities played a crucial role in ensuring successful logins and detecting any issues throughout the process, enabling the Orange and NHS teams to address performance concerns and enhance the overall experience, thereby minimizing disruptions in patient care delivery.
Additionally, it was imperative that legacy NHS applications function seamlessly on the new virtual desktops. To achieve this, Login Enterprise’s synthetic users and application workloads were employed to automate validation checks, scaling them based on the typical activities of real users to guarantee that applications operated smoothly within acceptable response times.
“It made a huge difference that Login Enterprise was there from the beginning. At every stage, we showed there was an improvement in response times, login times, and application performance.”
Following pilot testing in multiple hospital environments to fine-tune performance, the VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) solution was rolled out to the initial 1,000 users. Continuous performance monitoring by Login Enterprise provided immediate insights into the impact of changes on user experience.
In a project of this magnitude, maintaining both quality and speed within tight timelines is a delicate balancing act. Login Enterprise complemented Orange’s DevOps approach, enhancing the NHS’s agility and establishing essential feedback mechanisms to ensure project alignment while delivering top-tier performance.
HealthcareRemote Infrastructure
