The £12.5 million, five-year project by BT and Cornwall and Isles of Scilly NHS offers major benefits in delivering better healthcare for patients.

The high bandwidth network allows information and data to be shared almost instantly between doctors and medical staff at nearly 200 sites, including 17 hospitals.

For example, GPs can now view x-rays, clinical images and other information in their surgeries when meeting their patients, whilst clinicians and clinical staff can access real-time information and vital systems from the most remote corners of the county.

The Cornwall Community of Interest Network (COIN) is one of the largest in the South West and is expected to help provide better healthcare and save money by combining voice, video and data calls over the same network. It takes advantage of N3, the broadband network BT is building for the NHS as part of the National Programme for IT, to create a discreet network for Cornwall and Isles of Scilly NHS.

NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH), the agency delivering the national programme, provided a significant amount of funding for the Cornish project.

Simon Goodwin, director of Cornwall NHS Information and Technology Services, said: 'One of the key objectives of the ‘Healthy Futures' strategy for Cornwall is to provide high quality health services as close to the patients' homes as possible. This new high-speed and robust network is a key underpinning technology in helping the NHS overcome some of the challenges posed by the rural and remote nature of the county to deliver this strategy.

'It enables clinicians across the county to work and communicate more effectively. When harnessed with telemedicine and telecare it will allow clinicians to virtually go to the patient rather than the patient coming to the clinician.
'These new ways of working have been shown to improve patient care by speeding up diagnoses, reducing the time clinicians spend travelling, increasing the number of patients being seen and raising skill levels of clinical staff working in remote locations.

'Not only will the new network deliver immediate benefits, it also puts in place a network that will allow the NHS in Cornwall to fully implement the National Programme for IT.

'The national programme will allow the NHS to work and collaborate to deliver joined-up patient care wherever the patient is seen. This is particularly important in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly given the number of people who visit the county throughout the year.'

Len Chard, NHS Connecting for Health programme manager for N3, said: "This is another example of how progressive organisations, such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly NHS, are choosing to embrace technology for the benefit of patients and staff. It demonstrates how, at a local level, the NHS is using the potential of the technology the National Programme is delivering to benefit patients, healthcare professionals.

"By developing Community of Interest Networks the local bodies are harnessing the potential of broadband to run their operations more efficiently and effectively and at lower cost."

Malcolm Dicken, BT Health client manager for the South West, said: 'This network is a wonderful example of sophisticated technology helping to make people's lives better. It is also a great example of the private and public sectors working effectively together.

'This highly complex project has been completed on time and on budget thanks to a huge amount of cooperation and professionalism from all the many people and organisations involved.'

Related links to this article:
Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust [1]

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