The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is overhauling its digital operations and priming itself for future growth with the help of a new network solution and fully managed service from ANS Group.

The leading mental health trust provides medical training and education to students, as well as adult and child mental health services. This new fully-managed network will underpin both student and patient record systems, and will help to speed up checking-in processes, as well as enabling remote patient care and trust-wide scheduling.

Specialist cloud and managed services provider, ANS Group, is implementing a scalable Cisco local area network (LAN) solution and has also signed a five year fully managed service contract with the Trust in excess of half a million pounds, which will act as a key enabler for trust-wide digitalisation.

The Trust is already paper-light and has experienced substantial growth over the last few years. The new, resilient network, as well as ANS’ 24x7x365 performance monitoring, will support the trust in becoming entirely digital as it expands its services over the next five years and starts to execute its digitally-enabled Transformation strategy and to support their move to a new site.

Commenting on the partnership, David Wyndham-Lewis, Director of Transformation and Technology at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, said: “As a rapidly growing trust, we quickly identified the need to invest in state-of-the-art network infrastructure, in order to future-proof our operations and provide the best possible service to our patients and students.

“We tendered so that we could be confident that we were partnering with a specialist consultant. ANS perfectly matched our requirements and have been able to provide a high-quality service, along with the flexibility and level of management that we needed to completely transform our digital operations.”

Andy Barrow, CTO at ANS Group, added: “The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is an ambitious and forward-thinking organisation. It recognises why it’s crucial to provide a digital-first service and understands the benefits of having a comprehensive digital strategy and a robust network in place.

“We’re seeing more of this digitalisation across the NHS. It’s encouraging to see trusts like Tavistock and Portman investing in state-of-the-art technology to facilitate operations, both now and in the future.”