InTechnology’s Push To Talk service is similar to the ‘walkie-talkie’ systemstraditionally used to keep field workers in touch with the office, but uses mobilephones instead of radio, bringing ‘one to many’ communications into themodern age. The system enjoys all the benefits of mobile phone technology –fast, easy to use, flexible, cost-effective and easy to manage.

The Challenge: • The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust runs one of the largest general hospitals in East Anglia, with OCS as partners providing support services, including portering, around the large hospital site. A ‘pager’ service being used by OCS at Ipswich for communications with the team was proving extremely inefficient.

• When a porter was needed, very often for an urgent patient move, there could be a lapse of several minutes before a porter receiving a pager call from the control desk could walk to the nearest phone to reply.

• The control desk had no way of knowing where exactly on site each porter was situated in relation to the new requirement for service, which led to difficulties in allocating tasks efficiently.

• Any new system had to fulfil the requirements of providing confidentiality without intrusion.

The Solution: • In order to increase efficiency of its portering service to the hospital, achieve more rapid response times and save on unnecessary costs, OCS decided to subscribe to the Push To Talk communications service offered by InTechnology.

“OCS is proud of its reputation forefficiency and value for money inservices to customers. The Push To Talkservice provided by InTechnology hasincreased the efficiency of our porteringservices to the Ipswich Hospital. Becauseof its lower costs, we can furtherincrease value for money across therange of services to the Hospital Trust.”

“Because Push To Talk is more effectivein communicating with our porters, wefind that porters are working moreproductively with less time wasted. ThePush To Talk system saves on averagearound 4 minutes in providing responsefrom the portering team to arequirement in the hospital. Our recordsshow that since we brought in the PushTo Talk system for our team, the numberof patient moves accomplished in aweek has gone up significantly andtime spent on each move has reduced.”

Jonathan Welsby - OCS

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CASE STUDY Push To Talk Service

“Our team at the Ipswich Hospital find thatPush To Talk helps them to work moreefficiently, saving time and cost.”

Jonathan Welsby - OCS

OCS for Ipswich HospitalHealthcare Sector

The Push To Talk system provides fast,reliable and cost-effective communications,not only for service teams in hospitals, butfor any environment where teams ofworkers are managed from a control desk. It runs on the global GSM mobile phonenetwork, so has almost unlimited coverage.”

John Murray, Chief Technical Officer - InTechnology plc

“

InTechnology is a trusted partner to more than 400 commercial and public sector organisations managing over5,000 terabytes of data . We give clients maximum flexibility and cost control by delivering our services on apay-per-use basis which reduces or even eliminates upfront capital expenditure. We have our own data centresand a private UK-wide IP network delivering services backed by Service Level Agreement and supported byteams highly-skilled in operations and service delivery.

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“Our portering team like the systembecause it helps them to work moreefficiently, saving time and effort, andthey’re used to mobile phones anyway.”

“Push To Talk is safe to use aroundpatients and it gives us control withflexibility – for example, we had anawards ceremony here recently and wewere able to allocate phones to extrastaff just for the evening to help ourcommunications and management ofthe event. We get great support fromInTechnology – they are available 24 x 7and it only takes them five minutes tomake any change to the system weneed.”

“We are so impressed by the results ofusing Push To Talk in our work at theIpswich Hospital that we are promotingit in our bids for other contracts in largesites.”

Jonathan Welsby - OCS

• The portering team at the hospital carry mobile phones, enabled for the Push To Talk system, on which they now receive all calls for service from the control desk. They can respond immediately to a call, saving significant time.

• The message is sent by the control desk confidentially to an individual porter, with no details audible to bystanders and no background noise`

• The controller can immediately find out which porter is nearest to the required task enabling increased response times.

• Calls can be made ‘one to one’ or ‘one to many’, with the controller able to select instantly which phone or group of phones to contact.

The Benefits: • Push To Talk helps OCS provide efficient services to the Ipswich Hospital and its patients through improved communications and management, ease of use, rapid response, location planning and confidentiality.

• There was an significant improvement in response times

• Costs are low as Push To Talk uses existing mobile networks and cost-effective mobile handsets, saving on equipment needed for traditional wireless systems.

• The entry level mobile phone handsets are replaced in case of breakage at around £50, compared to replacement of radio handsets at around £300.

• OCS simply pay a service charge to InTechnology and a small usage charge per user per month to the network.

• The security and flexibility of the system is assured for OCS and Ipswich Hospital. The Push To Talk service uses a mobile phone handset and mobile network and is managed by InTechnology comprising of its secure LANnet network and data centre, and is supported by InTechnology’s expert helpdesk teams 24 x 7.