A health trust has shown its commitment to social distancing and virtual working by boosting its network capacity by ten times.
As part of its response to COVID-19. North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has increased its computer external network. Allowing more staff than ever before to work remotely.
It has also provided another 250 laptop devices for its staff to use off-site.
ICT network manager Gregg Hill said: “In a very short space of time, the team have increased the network capacity for remote working by a factor of ten. An incredible achievement to support social distancing.
“The network would normally allow around 80 people to work remotely at one time. This has now increased to up to 300.
“This typically takes around 90 days to complete – yet the team completed it in just two weeks!
“The team have worked tirelessly, in response to unprecedented circumstances, to complete this project in record time.”
Professor Graham Evans, chief information and technology officer, said: “All of the work we have carried out has been a combination. Both of clinical and business vision, leadership and technical enablement.
“By way of a comparison, in April 1970 Apollo 13 had a problem that Mission Control in Houston responded to. It resulted in some innovative out of the box thinking and pragmatic solutions.
“Fast forward to April 2020. We are one of many NHS organisations to implement a range of digital solutions to problems that we had not even considered previously.
“I’d like to thank the team for their tireless work to innovate and adapt in these very challenging times.”
