Wirral Health Informatics Service (WHIS), the IT service provider comprising information and IT departments of the NHS organisations in Wirral, has recently selected Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM to support over 10,000 IT users. The organisation is using Hornbill's service management software to provide support to medical and administrative staff across more than 100 sites, including Arrowe Park Hospital in Upton, Clatterbridge Hospital & Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology in Bebington, and 64 local GP practices.

WHIS selected Hornbill from a shortlist of eight other vendors for its ease of use and ability to be customised, as well as its proven compatibility with ITIL best practices. Since implementing Supportworks, the IT organisation has seen significant improvements in its service provision, having successfully introduced Service Level Agreements, and has recently been awarded full Connecting for Health (CfH) Service Desk Accreditation as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

As an Accredited Service desk, WHIS benefits from being able to report directly with its Local Service Providers rather than going via the National CfH Service Desk. As a result, WHIS can now handle incidents more quickly and consistently, with a greater level of transparency and accountability. NHS Wirral is also using the WHIS central service desk to provide external support for the 'Choose and Book' system for patient appointments.

According to Lorraine McNulty, Service Desk Manager at WHIS: "Hornbill's system matched our needs exactly. We wanted to implement ITIL with a view to becoming an Accredited Service Desk. Supportworks ITSM has enabled us to adopt ITIL best-practice processes, introduce Service Level Agreements and provide the necessary evidence to support our accreditation. Wirral Health Informatics Service now operates a central service desk, which enables us to service end users more efficiently, logging and resolving most types of IT queries at first line and reducing the number of calls to the different IT teams. Feedback from our customers is that they like the automatic notification and have seen an improvement in our service provision. We are now planning to introduce self-service which will enable us to provide an even better service."

WHIS' IT team, which logs approximately 1,300 incidents per week, provides support on all aspects of IT including procurement services, IT network and infrastructure, applications and development, information and clinical systems. The WHIS service desk logs all calls received by email, phone or voice message and users receive automatic email notification when their call has been resolved. The service desk runs a two-stage closure process, whereby calls are only closed after a set number of days of being resolved, to ensure that a new call does not have to be opened in the event of the original fault not being remedied to the end user's satisfaction.

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented: "To meet the increasing IT support needs of today's NHS, integration and seamless communication are crucial. By deploying Hornbill's Supportworks, organisations like Wirral Health Informatics Service can escalate more complex support requests electronically to central service desks at Local Service Providers. This leads to faster problem resolution and a significant improvement over the quality of service provided to NHS staff, ultimately enhancing customer and patient satisfaction."

-ends-


NOTES TO EDITORS


About Wirral Health Informatics Service

Wirral Health Informatics Service (WHIS) employs 150 staff located at several locations across the Wirral peninsula. With specialists based in each of the local hospitals and administrative headquarters, it provides managed on-site services which include training, application development, infrastructure planning and maintenance.

Formed in 2002, WHIS was an amalgamation of the respective Information and IT departments of the NHS organisations in Wirral. WHIS is jointly funded by:

• Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (its host organisation)
• NHS Wirral
• Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology NHS Foundation Trust

For more information, please visit: www.whis.nhs.uk