Middlesex hospital benefit from VoIP upgrade

A new VoIP network has been set up at Central Middlesex hospital in north-west London without requiring staff to change any telephone numbers.

The North West London Hospitals NHS Trust was carrying out redevelopment of the hospital and took the opportunity to replace the analogue voice communication system with VoIP to save on voice call costs.

Rick Juniper, director of ICT at the trust told E-Health Insider: "As part of the development we wanted to update the telephony used and try out internet telephony. The aim was to save money and have less cable.

"Our old system was an old BT analogue system and one of the problems with it was it was independent and switchboard controlled. The hospital has 2000 extensions and the neighbouring hospital, Northwick Park, has 6000.

"We had to ensure that we had one centralised switchboard to route all trust calls, and would interface seamlessly with the older systems to accurately match names and numbers through VoIP."

Using two servers on-site has added to the VoIP network in operation across the hospitals and also supports 340 analogue lines on the same system.

Mr Juniper described the large-scale switch to VoIP as a "risk" for the trust "but we feel it has paid off".

The system is due to be upgraded further with patient access made available using interactive voice response, which will allow people who do not know the extension number to just say the name of the staff member they wish to contact and be diverted to their direct line rather than go through a receptionist.