Itil is good medicine for Barts

Barts and the London NHS Trust is reaping the rewards following the adoption of the Itil model for its IT infrastructure - the result of several years of work.

Itil - or IT infrastructure library - is a set of best practice guidelines used by organisations when implementing an IT service management framework.

Following the initial implementation of Itil, the Trust's IT staff now have a more consistent approach for solving recurring problems, and issues can be identified before they escalate.

Deputy director of IT for the Trust, Doug Howe, said: "It [the Itil compliant helpdesk] gives us early warning of a problem."

Howe said the Trust is now assessing which systems are in place and how it can be more proactive with its investment.

It first looked at Itil in 2004 and started by mapping its existing systems against the Itil requirements. This process revealed Barts wasn't quite ready to adopt Itil and so some more groundwork was needed.

The main problem, according to Howe, was there was no common language to link the various IT systems, some of which had been in place for nearly a decade.

Howe said: "We had well-defined processes but we couldn't make them fit [with Itil]."

For example, when the IT helpdesk received calls it was often difficult to link up related calls, meaning follow-up action was often inconsistent.

The Trust provided all members of the ICT team with Itil foundation training so they could understand the benefits of the new framework. Once this was done, the team could set about defining and documenting processes to fit with Itil.

Between December 2005 and May 2006 IT skills company Plan-Net worked with Barts to speed up Itil delivery and advise the Trust on how to approach the changes.

Plan-Net had previously carried out a health check for the ICT department and had a good understanding of how mature the Barts' systems were for Itil implementation. This allowed consultants to help it develop processes that worked appropriately within the hospital environment.

Initially, the Trust identified problem management, change management and service level agreement as the three processes that would deliver the biggest benefits. These processes were then applied to the pathology communication system, Active Directory and Exchange.

Where good and efficient processes already existed, Plan-Net was keen to retain them and advised Barts on how to incorporate them into the new infrastructure.

The next phase for the Trust will be to extend the Itil processes across all applications and focus on improving services still further.

A new Itil toolkit has recently been put in place that will allow Barts to apply Itil guidelines to other areas which have not yet been covered.

Howe described the toolkit as the "bedrock of where we're going next".