Guy's & St Thomas' Hospital Trust Intranet ‐ relaunching a hospital Intranet
| Pages | 24-32 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040747 |
| Author | Graham Davies |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Guy's &
St
Thomas'
Hospital Trust Intranet
- relaunching
a
hospital Intranet
by Graham Davies, Trust
Web
Master
This article describes
and
evaluates
the
relaunch
of
the Guy's
&
St
Thomas'
Hospital
Trust
Intranet.
It
provides
an
overview
of
the
pre-launch
preparation,
an
outline
of
the
relaunch
itself,
and
of
the post-relaunch
follow-up.
The process
is
evaluated critically
in
terms
of
the impact
it
had on Intranet
usage.
Future Intranet developments are
also
highlighted.
Introduction
Guy's
& St
Thomas' provides acute
and
specialist
hospital services
for
over
3/4
million patients
every year
and is one
of the largest NHS Trusts
in
the UK. The NHS Hospital Trust was formed
in
April 1993 with
the
merger of Guy's
& St
Tho-
mas'
Hospitals.
The
IT
Department runs
a
Windows
NT
network
with approximately
3,000
networked
PC's
avail-
able
to
c.6-7,000
staff.
These
PCs
fall into
two
main categories
-
office
and
ward loadsets.
The
office loadset contains
a
full application of
pro-
grams, including MS Office 97/2000,
and MS
Outlook. These PCs
are
located
on the
desktops
of
hospital administrative, management
and
senior
clinical
staff.
Access
is
gained
by a
entering
a
username
and
password unique
to the
machine.
The ward
PC's
have
a
greatly reduced loadset,
comprising
of
some
core clinical systems
(e.g.
Patient Administration, Results Reporting),
and
crucially
a
web browser. Each
PC
boots automati-
cally
to the
pre-defined desktop
in
order
to
minimise
the
security risk posed
by
locating
machines
in a
public access area.
Two PCs are
positioned
on
each ward,
and
staff based
on
that
ward share them
to
access
the
hospital network.
The Trust Intranet
The Trust first introduced
an
Intranet system
in the
spring
of
1997.
It
consisted of a
few
corporate
pages (e.g. home page, management information)
and some departmental sites.
The
system suffered
from
a
lack of planning, structure, coherent design,
and dedicated members
of
staff to ensure content
was maintained.
As a
result,
the
Intranet was never
formally launched,
nor
was
it
widely used.
However,
the
reasons
for
establishing
a
corporate
Intranet were still valid. Communication through-
out
the
large, twin sited organisation wasn't good,
and
the
differing technical capabilities of the ward
and office loadsets, meant that the web browser
was
the
ideal tool
for
disseminating corporate
information.
The
publication of Information for
Health
by the
Government
in
late 1998,
and the
development of the NHSnet
- an
extranet
for the
National Health Service
-
reinforced
the
impor-
tance of establishing
a
successful Intranet.1
Information for Health clearly identifies web-
based technology
as the
central element
of
its
aim
of "transforming
the
delivery of health services,
improving
the
health of the nation
and the
quality
of patient care"2.
In
order
to
participate
in
this
vision
of
seamless
web
based delivery of health
care,
it
was vital that
the
Trust
had a
flourishing
Intranet.
As such,
the
Trust decided
to
appoint
it's
first
Webmaster
in
order
to
develop
the
system
and
utilise
its
true potential.
As the
technical infra-
structure
and the IT
support mechanisms were
established,
it is
proposed that this article will
concentrate purely
on the
non-technical aspects
of
the Intranet relaunch
and
management.
The role
of the
Webmaster
I
was
appointed
as the
Trust's first Webmaster
in
December 1998
to
manage
a
quality assured
Intranet
and to
ensure full
use
of this innovative
communication tool throughout
the
Trust.
The
Webmaster's remit also covered
the
Trust's
externally hosted Internet/WWW site. However,
as
this aspect of the post
is
outside
the
scope
of
this
article,
it
will only
be
touched upon with reference
to
the
Intranet.
Although
the
post
has
some technical aspects,
the
emphasis
is on the
Information Management
and
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