COVID-19 hit fast, and Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust was equally quick to respond. When government mandates forced the trust to move staff and patient clinics off the main hospital site, it moved quickly to enable 2,000 employees to work from home and continue providing essential services. And with the help of Citrix Systems, it was up and running in less than two days.
“We had to move all our staff out and rapidly transition as many services as we could to remote delivery,” said Mark Hutchinson, Executive Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO) for the trust. “But that’s easier said than done.”
Many hospitals in the same situation rushed to buy hundreds of laptops to support their teams. The trust went a different route. “We didn’t want to just buy hundreds of expensive laptops that we’d have to set up, distribute out to staff who need them most and then have the challenge of counting them all back in,” Hutchinson said.
The trust chose instead to work with Citrix Gold Solution Advisor LIMA to implement Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and provide secure, reliable access to the clinical apps and information employees would need to do their jobs from home using personal devices.
All the trust’s support and patient administration services now operate remotely through a virtual desktop on the devices of their choice – from Macs to PCs.
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