Technology estate

A robust and resilient technology estate is the foundation upon which services and systems are built and accessed. Providing an estate which is secure from cyber threats and protected against unnecessary downtime means that every part of the infrastructure requires careful architectural consideration, support, service management and vigilance. 

NHSGGC has invested significantly to upgrade the vast majority of PCs, laptops and tablets. This investment will be built upon by planning for the ongoing refresh of these devices and operating systems, enabling accurate financial planning, and ensuring that the devices staff use are never obsolete or unsupportable. 

eHealth already hosts some services within the ‘Cloud’: on another organisation’s hardware which can be expanded as required. This use of cloud computing is likely to increase as we look to meet increasing requirements to store and process large amounts of data. Cloud computing also helps NHSGGC to become more energy efficient as this is a ‘greener’ way to deliver our services. 

We have successfully transformed the majority of our telephony estate to a modern, cost effective and operationally sustainable technology platform. 25,000 handsets were renewed, along with supporting servers and software alongside the switchboard technology.

Our staff require the ability to use a variety of device types and to access key systems when and where required. The continuing shift towards home and blended working and remote practice has shown that robust Remote Access solutions are a necessity. Applications which facilitate this approach such as the Microsoft 365 product set, will continue to be essential for this way of working. 

Redundancy and resilience

To ensure that technology is available reliably where it is needed, our design approach is founded on the principles of safety and security. This is underpinned by the infrastructure - the data centre servers that run the programs and the networks that connect the users to them. 

As reliance on digital records increases, we will continue to implement reliable digital solutions with robust business continuity measures in place to ensure that staff can continue to work safely in the event of adverse technical events. 

In addition to the physical hardware there is also a logical infrastructure including Active Directory (which enables users to log in), programs that manage the contents installed on all the computers, and data backup systems. These too are highly resilient, having multiple instances in each data centre. 

Proportionate cyber resilience models

NHSGGC has proportionate cyber resilience models which, in the event of system downtime, will help staff continue to work effectively. The introduction of systems such as HEPMA and TrakCare Active Clinical Notes make it ever more important that eHealth and clinical services work in partnership to ensure resilience for priority systems. Digital is just part of this approach: the combination of technology and working practice is essential to minimise the impact of system unavailability. 

Commitment to modern and supported technology

We maintain hundreds of applications and tens of thousands of pieces of hardware which make up our technology estate. A key component of our strategic vision is to ensure that applications and hardware remain supported by the relevant vendor. We will continue to work with users to prioritise applications requiring intervention and these will be modernised as appropriate, along with the underpinning infrastructure upon which they rely. 

Production Infrastructure

Our Production Infrastructure (PI) is a ‘private cloud’ containing servers, storage and networking which provides NHSGGC with the infrastructure to host the many applications and services used by our staff. The PI supports around 700 servers including Tier 1 applications such as TrakCare, SCI Store and Clinical Portal; management information databases and dashboards; high-capacity file servers and image stores; low-latency telephony servers as well as the multitude of other clinical servers and infrastructure components that are crucial for day-to-day patient care. In total, the PI can host 1.5 petabytes of replicated data. 

Remote access 

More staff access eHealth services from home than ever before and the expectation is that our systems should be available from whichever location is most appropriate. We will implement further resilience for remote access with additional capacity. 

GP estate

Software and hardware will be upgraded and modernised across all 240 GP practices in NHSGGC, providing a platform for the new GP IT system and cloud-hosted DocMan instance, to ensure security and performance into the future. 

Cloud hosting

NHSGGC currently host several systems in the public cloud. Our use of cloud hosting will continue to be developed and extended, reducing the need for hardware within our local datacentres. In the future a “cloud first” approach will be used when introducing new systems. However, all options for hosting whether they are on premise or in the cloud will be risk assessed in terms of requirement, resilience, IT and cyber security and cost. This will mean that our services are located in the most appropriate location based on measures such as cost, resilience required, response times and scalability needs. 

Storage

The requirement for data to be securely stored continues to increase. For example, new technologies in Diagnostic Services such as Digital Pathology create very large volumes of image and video data. We will work with Diagnostic Services to upgrade and provide new methods of storing data. 

Microsoft 365

Like all NHS Boards in Scotland, NHSGGC implemented Microsoft Teams (part of the O365 platform) at the beginning of the pandemic. Both NHS Mail and local NHSGGC email have now been migrated to M365. This means that staff can securely access their email from any Internet-connected location and from a much greater variety of devices than was previously possible. 

In the coming period the Microsoft O365 programme will look at the implementation of SharePoint Online to replace Shared Drives and OneDrive to replace users’ Home Drives. A focus on benefits realisation will also take place at a national, regional and local level to find new and innovative ways of working with the product set which O365. One such example is the Multi-Disciplinary Team meeting app which has been developed using Microsoft 365 tools and applications.

• Continue to refresh up to 5,000 devices annually 
• Continue to deliver modern, sustainable and cost-effective telephony solutions to maximise benefits 
• User experience will be continually evaluated, and improvements made when and where possible 
• Source solutions using recognised procurement methods to obtain demonstrable best value 
• Cloud First – Where possible and where cost effective and resilient, applications will be delivered as cloud-hosted ‘Software as a Service’. 
• Maximise the investment in existing systems and infrastructure before buying new software 
• Further extend the Microsoft Office 365 digital tools to replace StaffNet, shared drives and users’ home drives 
• Undertake the national cyber security audits and reviews