Better together: Why a complementary Cisco and Microsoft strategy delivers better outcomes in healthcare.

As organisations assessed their technology options, in the UK public sector as many as 1.2 million staff across NHS organisations, including Trusts, CCGs, and health Informatics Services, are now using Microsoft Teams owing to the national Microsoft 365 contract.

While Cinos welcomes this and feels it represents significant benefit to the NHS, in our opinion, organisations need to consider the wider requirements of critical internal and external communications, particularly within acute hospitals.

We have unparalleled experience in delivering, always on, hybrid cloud unified communications services to a range of acute and community healthcare services. For a long time, we have argued that the critical communications services, especially within a healthcare environment, should not be consumed from public cloud services or via the Internet.

To us, a Better Together strategy sees the adoption of Microsoft Teams on the end user device of choice, and where possible used for non-critical internal and external communications. It offers users a uniform experience for calling, collaborating, and joining video and audio conferences. This is all absolutely fine for non-critical communications, where there is a level of acceptance that on a relatively rare occasion, the service may not be available.

Our argument for non-public cloud for critical communications focuses on those calls that must always work. For example, the NHS standard 2222 number, or calls from critical areas such as ITU and A&E. In these scenarios, users might not have the luxury of time to log into or unlock a PC or find their smartphone; they need to reach for the nearest physical handset and make that crucial call.

And this is where Cisco comes in. Cisco healthcare solutions are built on a strong, secure IT infrastructure which keep healthcare services up and running despite local or global disruptions. Better together means utilising a robust, always available telephony service, with physical handsets in critical locations, tightly integrated with Microsoft Teams on the user device of choice. This telephony service can have an element of cloud but must be locally survivable in the event of a cloud, network, or environmental outage.

Cinos has mastered the art of delivering always on, feature rich telephony and unified communications services within the healthcare setting, delivered in hybrid cloud managed service models built upon a five-point resilience strategy. This means those critical telephony services never fail, while day to day users may enjoy the best of both worlds: Cisco for critical communications, and Microsoft for collaboration services on the desktop or smartphone.

Better together extends to the MDT meeting or patient consultation too. Our Managed MDT services provides true interoperability between video enabled MDT rooms, mobile devices or even the home office on a device of the users choosing. The big green button in the room commences the MDT session with ease and brings everyone together.

For consultation, our Refero telehealth service integrates with HL7 based PAS and EPR systems to deliver secure video consultations to individual patients, or groups of up to 50 service users including families and support networks without fail. In the summer of 2021, it is our intention to complete integration of Refero with Microsoft Teams too, meaning that clinicians have a single tool for internal and external patient video engagement.

If you are looking for communications solutions for your healthcare organisation and would like to discuss your requirements with an expert, please get in touch. We would be delighted to help.