Yorkshire hospital gives kids web, TV and VoIP for free

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Sheffield Children's Hospital is fulfilling the original government promise to provide free communications technology to children in hospital with new internet protocol (IP) based calls, internet and TV access.

Hospitals around the UK have installed bedside units to allow their patients to make phone calls, watch TV and surf the web as a result of the government initiative started a few years ago. The services were to be free for children's hospitals.

Many providers in the market that emerged to deliver these services do so free of capital costs, recouping them from patients and relatives by charging for the services. But the children's hospital in Sheffield, which is part of the Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust, opted not to contract a supplier but still wanted to provide the services in-house, in line with NHS guidelines, for its young patients.

Russell Banks, head of information management and technology at the Trust said: "We explored the possibility of an externally managed system from a number of large, national suppliers. But, as well as cost issues, we found that contractual obligations were often prohibitive. Deals offered would have tied us in for up to 15 years and restricted the use of the facility. We wanted something that gave us the initial solution but then enabled us to build on that infrastructure to take advantage of the changing needs of the service and technology."

Following an initial pilot on one ward that began in October 2007 and was carried out with existing partner, technology infrastructure specialist ANS Group, the Trust has now embarked on a full-scale implementation of the phone, web and TV bedside service that can be managed as part of the hospital's internal IT and telecoms infrastructure and used by both the children and the staff.

Having worked with ANS Group to install and manage the Trust's existing Novell and Cisco communications platform, the IT team installed 25 'bedhead' custom phone, internet and TV service units adapted to link directly to the hospital's existing IP and analogue telephone network in November 2007, with a view to rolling out another 100 over the coming months.

The system has also been adapted so that nurses, as part of their normal duties to update the information for each patient at admission and discharge, can enable the clinical system to automatically assign each child with secure personal identification number information. This is then controlled by the telephony system enabling unique information for each child's visit and a secure means to access each child's records.

"We're still looking into how to make the service as cost-effective as possible, and how to integrate the children's phone service with our internal clinical calls," added Banks. "It's been a very successful experience - it's great that we can make our kids as happy as possible throughout their stay in hospital."

Sheffield Children's Hospital Charity funds the service.

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