Alistair Vickers

Better Together - Plunkets plan to create a common communications infrastructure
Presenter(s): Alistair Vickers, Royal NZ Plunket Society
Air Date: 5/22/2009
Length: 30 Minutes 1 Second

GOVIS 2009 - Civic 2 - Day 3 - Session 2

From the first connection in Masterton in 1914, Plunket has actively grown its telecommunications network. The number of fixed and, more recently, mobile connections, have multiplied enormously. Every Plunket area, branch and sub-branch has one or more accounts with telephony service providers. Some, but not all, of these connections are on records held centrally.

Our challenge is to create one centralised record of every single fixed and mobile phone connection, together with all the services associated with these connections – faxability, call waiting, messaging. We’re looking for ‘one single version of the truth’ for Plunket’s entire telephony usage.

We are in the process of developing the solution to consolidating records of the telephony services Plunket uses. At the same time we’re looking at how we can best use modern telecommunications as a way of improving how we deliver our services, and our internal and external communications.

There are opportunities to leverage various technologies such as VoIP, OCS, video conferencing and Unified Communications. Together with improved mobile data transfer over 3G networks, this means that soon Plunket nurses could use their mobile phones for a variety of functions, including:
a. Calendar appointments on their phones to synchronise back into a central Exchange server (which could then allow for automated text and email reminders for appointments to Plunket clients).
b. Collecting basic clinical data sets electronically to speed up reporting, improve data quality and reduce processing costs.
c. Replacing some current paper-based management functions, such as leave requests, with an electronic equivalent.

One of our slogans is ‘Better Together’. The aim of the current telephony project is to consolidate and update current technologies to bring the whole organisation much closer together.

Key learning points:
1. Identify what you know, but more importantly, identify what you don’t know.
2. Build upon existing skills and technologies rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
3. Do not deploy technology for technology’s sake – be sure to get the buy-in from the operational grass roots and build on the enthusiasm this creates.

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