Deal makes trust the largest NHS organisation to take up the cloud based software suite
Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) has signed up with Microsoft to use its cloud based Office 365 for business suite.
The company said this makes the organisation, which runs Addenbrookes and Rosie Hospitals, the largest healthcare organisation in England to take up the package.
It has emphasised the capacity to run the suite alongside the trust’s Epic electronic patient record system, which brings together clinical and administrative information.
Dr Zafar Chaudry, CUH’s chief information officer, said: “Microsoft Office 365 will work alongside our Epic system to enhance the administrative side of our work, helping us to work even more efficiently and effectively across the entire organisation to ultimately benefit our patients.
“Once all services are made available to staff, planned to start later this year, CUH will become the largest healthcare organisation in England running Microsoft Office 365.”
The deal reflects Microsoft’s emphasis on bringing together a range of applications within a single package, providing a ‘fit for purpose’ option that is more cost-effective than procuring them separately. In this case it has highlighted the availability to CUH of collaboration tools such as Skype for Business, Yammer, Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Teams.
The trust has recently carried out a network refresh that enabled the connection of 800 new mobile devices to Epic, made Wi-Fi available to all of its clinical areas, and replaced 5,500 computers with 6,750 new ones and 500 laptops.
Image: Addenbrookes Hospital by D Dinneen at English Wikipedia, public domain
