Overcoming healthcare challenges with managed IT services
In 2025, the NHS is under greater pressure than perhaps ever before: growing backlogs, A&E waiting times etc. To clear the 7.5-million person waiting list, the government wants the service to deliver at least 2 million extra appointments this year alone.
On top of this, managers also have ambitious digital transformation targets to hit. The service is committed to delivering digital primary care, deploying connected digital systems across different care providers, and transitioning to electronic patient records across NHS organisations and social care providers.
It’s reasonable to ask how anyone can be expected to do all this at once. Reasonable, but the wrong question. In fact, digital transformation can be the springboard to achieve these other goals.
And with the right approach, and the right managed IT support services, NHS providers can achieve these benefits fast, with minimum upfront overheads.
Table of contents
- Technology as a healthcare enabler
- Why outsourced IT support services is key to realising these benefits
- Compliance is easy with IT outsourcing
- How we can help
Technology as a healthcare enabler
As part of a coherent delivery strategy, technology can deliver rapid benefits to clinicians and to patients. These range from improving access to care using telehealth right up to using AI to accelerate complex diagnoses.
Some of the challenges technology can help healthcare providers to meet include:
- Cut A&E waiting times using AI to optimise resource allocation and remote triage to accelerate patients onto the right clinical pathway.
- Reduce systems downtime and enable clinicians to work effective round the clock, with 24/7 IT helpdesk support for key systems.
- Free beds faster to increase patient throughput by improving co-operation with social-care providers using electronic patient records.
- Make budgets go further using intelligent, digital resources management to maximise return on equipment and staff.
- Cut the cost of running key clinical and patient services by using pre-configured, healthcare-optimised, secure and compliant cloud services.
- Empower patients, catch problems before they reach crisis point, and reduce the burden on clinicians, with connected patient self-care apps.
- Ensure smooth consultations and seamless patient handover, with managed networks delivering robust and resilient access to data and core systems.
- Improve diagnosis accuracy and accelerate time to diagnosis, using artificial intelligence (AI) to spot patterns in patient data faster than a clinician alone can.
- Improve access to expertise, cut travel budgets and reduce emissions with greater use of secure video conferencing between providers.
- Give clerical and clinical staff the tools they need to quickly and reliably perform core productivity tasks, with Microsoft 365.
- Build an expert-led technology roadmap, setting out a plan to deploy the mission critical technology you need, with a virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO).
With secure, compliant managed support services for healthcare, providers can experience instant benefits, helping them meet this year’s targets. They can also then use this initial investment in digital infrastructure to build toward even greater future returns.
Why outsourced IT support services is key to realising these benefits
To realise these — and other — benefits, healthcare providers need to accelerate the rate of their digital transformation. It’s at this point that many healthcare providers hit a barrier. They lack the internal resources and expertise to digitise at a faster rate.
A recent survey asked UK clinicians what barriers prevented them from using technology at work. The most common answer, cited by 55% of participants, was lack of technology expertise and support. The second most common answer was lack of funding.
The answer to these challenges, is to work with managed IT services. An IT outsource service provider has the expertise and the technologies the NHS requires on hand, accessible without any wait time or prohibitive upfront costs.
An example of this in action, is City Health Clinic, a GP and dental practice in Edinburgh. The practice was looking for ways to harden security and demonstrate compliance. Working with Texaport, City Health Clinic’s IT team were able to optimise around best practices and deploy advanced security and data-protection technologies. This enabled the practice to achieve its Cyber Essentials certification.
By partnering with a provider of managed IT support services, healthcare providers can:
- Boost productivity, and patient throughput, reducing wait times, with modern cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies.
- Improve clinical outcomes, within the organisation and with partner orgs, using modern, streamlined information and data sharing.
- Cut costs and make their budgets go further with more efficient, streamlined, modern IT technologies.
- Beat the talent shortage with instant and round-the-clock access to top IT talent and expertise.
- Reduce risk, increase responsiveness, and tailor care more closely to patient needs, using always-up-to-date records that automatically follow patients.
- Benefit from proven, pre-deployed data and security technologies that enable them to improve outcomes and ensure compliance.
By choosing an IT support services provider with specific healthcare expertise, NHS institutions can accelerate their digital transformation and achieve rapid returns that show up as improved clinical and financial outcomes.
Compliance is easy with outsourced IT support
In a highly regulated sector such as healthcare, there’s understandable concern that new technologies and services must be compliant. Relevant regulations include the GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Medical Devices Regulations 2002.
The answer is to work with an outsourced IT support services provider that has a record of success in working with healthcare providers.
Such a provider will:
- Have customisable templates and installs, with the necessary security and compliance features and configurations built in.
- Understand the challenges and requirements of healthcare providers, enabling them to quickly tailor their services and platforms to your needs.
- Have consultants and engineers with the healthcare-specific expertise they need to secure your operations to the highest security and compliance standards.
Partnering with a healthcare IT support provider means both rapid clinical, efficiency, and financial results as well as demonstrable compliance with key regulations.
And as the third-most targeted sector by cybercriminals, healthcare has every reason to pay extra attention to security, compliance and data protection. This underlines the critical and growing importance of cyber security to every aspect of healthcare.
"With our IT and Cyber security now being managed by Texaport we have met our compliance requirements, ensuring we handle sensitive client data safely."
Mohsin Ullah CEO, City Health Clinic
How we can help
Texaport is one of the UK’s leading providers of outsourced IT support to both NHS and private healthcare providers.
Our consultants and engineers have the healthcare-specific knowledge you need, to benefit from an instant productivity boost, while also hardening your security and easily demonstrating ongoing compliance.
Contact us today to speak to one of our consultants today, to find out how technology can help you achieve your financial, clinical and efficiency goals.
