Health workers go walkabout

BlackBerrys were too expensive for the Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority (SHA), so it had to find something cheaper for remote access to email.

At one of England's largest SHAs managers are constantly on the move. To improve communications between road warriors and speed up the decision-making process, the SHA had to find a way of saving money without buying new devices.

Bruce Wright, IT manager at Eastbourne Downs Primary Care Trust, which manages IT procurement for the SHA, said: "BlackBerry was too expensive. The SHA is not medical or clinical - the people on the ground are managers. The main thing is getting information to them, such as their diaries or calendars. People are often travelling so there's a lot of time they are waiting for meetings when they could be doing something else."

Wright and his team opted for software from mobile messaging firm Openhand. The software links PDAs and other mobile devices to Microsoft Exchange accounts over an encrypted connection.

"When Openhand came along the principal driver was cost," he said. The cost of the Openhand system works out to around £3.50 per person per month.

The SHA originally started off with five to 10 different handsets as it looked at different implementations in the NHS.

"In the NHS we are not allowed to have any internet connections into the intranet - only outgoing connections. So the client makes a connection to your server through a firewall. It works over GSM, GPRS or internet. If you can get a connection to the internet you can use it."

Wright said that the service works with mobile phones and laptops: "We've got a bunch of mobiles. We started using [the software] on laptops with Bluetooth. One client licence lets you use as many devices as possible. You can download big files to a laptop and have both devices going at the same time."

So far Wright and his team have rolled out the service to around 90 people: "Initially we wanted email and calendars. This gives you access to everything in your inbox. You can access public folders, address books. The only thing you can't access is other people's calendars."

As with many public sector projects, Wright said the return on investment was not obvious in financial terms.

"It's difficult to know because we don't have a bottom line," he added. "I would imagine for me it saves two to three hours a week. For someone who is mobile all of the time it would be more than that.

"But there are one or two downsides. Because it's a live system, if you don't have a connection, you can't get anything. You can't pull email and store it but you can write email while not connected."