Single sign on for Liverpool Trust

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Overwhelmed with forgotten password queries and too many user names, the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust has implemented a single sign on password system.

With so many different applications requiring security, staff were faced with remembering different user names and passwords for each. "We found as the number of password protected applications has grown, the actual management has become a problem," said Dr Zafar Chaudry, director of information management and technology at the trust. "People can't remember 10 or 12 user IDs, so they're taping them to the back of cards or putting post it notes up."

But it wasn't just clinical staff who were suffering. Whenever clinicians forgot a password, they would call the IT help desk to reset it. "Half the time all our help desk does is reset passwords," said Chaudry.

To help battle the problem, the trust rolled out Imprivata's OneSign appliance - first to a 25-person trial, which was later extended to 200 people. As the pilot proved successful, it will be implemented for all 1,000 staff over the next six to seven weeks, he said.

The trust purchased two appliances, with one used as a failover. Setting up the appliances took a few hours, while configuring them for all the applications took three days, he said. The OneSign system is being used for access to ten of the trust's 15 applications, including medical information systems as well as email. More applications are set to be added.

When accessing the included applications, the bulk of clinicians use their building access cards on a proximity reader, so they no longer need to remember user names. Now, they walk up to the machine and enter their PIN - and automatically logged off when they walk away, saving typing time and improving security.

The remainder of clinicians, working in accident and emergency as well as neonatology, preferred to take the biometric route. Instead of using proximity cards, they scan their fingers before entering a PIN.

While staff no longer need to remember user names, they still sometimes forget passwords. But under the new system, they can reset their own passwords using personalised security questions they set themselves. After deploying to 200 users, the help desk saw a drop in calls of ten per cent. Multiplying that to the rest of the users could see a drop of 50 per cent in calls, saving the trust as much as £20,000 annually. It's good for IT department moral, too, as constantly resetting passwords "isn't the most exciting job anyway," Chaudry said.

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