CALDERDALE AND HUDDERSFIELD NHS
a shared inventory solution across the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts ."
Behind the scenes , Griffin and her team had a lot of work to do when the pandemic began . Within two weeks , they had transitioned over 2,000 employees to work from home , which required increasing the available bandwidth so the workforce could use Microsoft Teams to stay connected . " That was quite a challenge , but it was a challenge that we met ," she says .
With THIS , Griffin and her team enabled this to happen across all the organisations they support . THIS provides information management and technical support to a number of customers , predominantly in West Yorkshire . It also manages the National Pathology Exchange ( NPEx ), a service that links all UK labs together through a single hub so that any lab can send test requests and pathology results digitally in minutes . " During the pandemic , we connected all 160 labs across the NHS , and it ' s been a fantastic success . We were very instrumental in making sure that the goal of 100,000 COVID-19 tests a day was delivered nationally ."
" What I ' m most proud of is how the 200 staff that work for THIS pulled together to mobilise things like the vaccination centres and the testing centres . Technology underpins all those centres . We literally stood up every single one of those across the West Yorkshire area ."
Once the pandemic subsides , some of their new ways of working are likely to remain , such as virtual consultations . " Virtual care was always an aspiration , but it became a necessity when COVID hit ", explains Graham Walsh , Chief Clinical Information Officer .
" We very quickly started using Microsoft Teams to do some of those virtual consultations , and we found that clinicians adopted the change well , but also that patients really embraced it . cht . nhs . uk 13