Nottingham University Hospitals deploys state-of-the-art Cisco Cius Mobile Workforce Solution with Nervecentre software to increase operational efficiency and improve patient care.

1. Cisco Integrated EHR Solutions
Case Study
1 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Nottingham University Hospitals Deploys
State-of-the-Art Cisco Cius Mobile Workforce
Solution with Nervecentre Software to Increase
Operational Efficiency and Improve Patient Care
Cius replaces outdated communications system to streamline collaboration and
help caregivers spend more time with patients
HIGHLIGHTS
CUSTOMER PROFILE
• Client Name: Nottingham University
Hospitals
• Headquarters: Nottingham, England
• Revenue/Assets: £722.5 million
• Employees: 13,000
• Wards: 87
• Beds: Approx. 1,700
CISCO SOLUTION
• Cisco Cius
BENEFIT HIGHLIGHTS OF CISCO CIUS
WITH NERVECENTRE
• Combination of mobile computing and
collaboration capabilities empowers a
virtualized desktop environment
• Color coded alerts help staff prioritize
patient calls
• Improved operational efficiency has
eliminated confusing repeat calls,
increased complete jobs per hour
• 20x improvement in senior nurse
direct clinical care
• Secure environment keeps patient
data safe
• 8,000 hours of additional clinical
support capacity directed into patient
care
• ROI in 4 years with annual savings of
$161,750
Hospital at the Forefront of Care
Formed in 2006 and comprised of Queen’s Medical Centre,
Nottingham City Hospital, and Ropewalk House, Nottingham
University Hospitals (NUH) has become one of the busiest
acute care medical centers in England. Each year, it serves
more than 2.5 million residents in the local area and provides
specialist services to an additional 3-4 million people in
neighboring counties. The hospital has earned a reputation
of international prominence for outstanding stroke, renal,
neurosciences, cancer, and trauma specialty care. As a
teaching institution, NUH is at the forefront of many research
programs and new surgical procedures in partnership with
the University of Nottingham.

2. 2 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The hospital employs 13,000 staff, of which a there is a mix of highly skilled doctors, nurses, and resident
student physicians. With round-the-clock care, “hospital at night” (H@N) — the 16 hours outside the typical
9-5 workday — had become a challenge to manage and provide optimum care. At issue was communication
among the small staff teams, prioritizing patient cases, and maintaining the highest level of care possible.
Since H@N represents 75% of the working year, it was crucial that NUH implement a solution that would
increase operational efficiency and enable senior staff to provide direct clinical care.
To overcome these challenges, the hospital deployed Cisco Cius, a mobile collaboration and computing
device along with Nervecentre Software that NUH uses to keep hospital staff in constant communication
and enable real-time workflow optimization.
Communication Challenges
According to Dr. Dominick Shaw, a lead consultant of H@N, the hospital’s pager system hadn’t been
upgraded since the 1960s. This antiquated technology was unreliable and clumsy, requiring doctors to find
a phone to respond to pages. Fraught with delays, the process meant that response times weren’t timely,
multiple requests created challenges for the staff, patient data was not handled in a consolidated manner,
jobs weren’t being completed and logged effectively, and most importantly, patient care was sub-optimal.
Vicky Kaluza, a H@N coordinator and senior staff nurse says, “The volume of calls was immense. There were
up to 150 calls in a shift. We couldn’t prioritize calls. We were always chained to our desks because the bleep
would continually go off.” This flawed communication system meant that highly skilled H@N coordinators were
spending 97% of their time at their desks, leaving only a very small window of time to care for patients.
While it would have been easy to give everyone a mobile phone, NUH needed a solution that was more robust.
The Cisco Cius provided unparalleled mobility and an ecosystem to enable mobile application delivery in
conjunction with the Nervecentre workflow application. Together they improved efficiency with embedded
tracking capabilities to log and tag patient jobs, utilize innovative mobile and paperless technologies, and also
help hospital staff prioritize and manage their workload — to provide the quickest response times and the best
patient care possible.
Cisco Cius “Perfect” for the Hospital
Paul Cook, an account manager with Cisco’s UK Healthcare division, says Cius was perfect for NUH because
of its combination of mobile computing capabilities and mobile communication features that best supports the
virtual desktop environment. The Cius solution enables staff to be out in wards caring for patients and yet always
connected to the latest patient status and requests. Moreover, the video communications devices were ideal to
improve staff communications. He says most importantly, Cius is very secure, so critical patient data will always
be safe.
Implementation teams found Cius to be an optimum platform because it provides the simplicity of an Android
development environment while providing access to the entire end-to-end suite of Cisco collaboration
technologies.
“It has cut down on repeated calls. It means we can manage our team much
more efficiently, and the number of jobs processed per hour has really
increased.”
— Dr. Dominick Shaw, lead consultant H@N, Nottingham University Hospitals

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Unified Communications Redefines Patient Care, Improves Bottom Line
Dr. Shaw says that since NUH staff members have begun using Cius, “There has been a step change in practice
at our hospital.” With the new system, patient jobs are coded with red, green, and amber alerts to quickly signal
the status. This allows doctors and nurses to prioritize response times and address urgent patient needs over
routine requests. Vicky Kaluza echoes Dr. Shaw’s sentiment by saying that, “Hand-over meetings are a lot
quicker and simpler because everything is computerized.” Furthermore, Cius has reduced repeat calls and
staff confusion, so more jobs are completed per hour. Staff satisfaction has been rated at a whopping 90%.
Indeed, statistics prove that Cius has had a dramatic impact on the hospital. H@N coordinators now spend
60% of their time providing direct clinical care — a vast improvement over the previous 3% patient care with old
processes — adding approximately 8,000 senior nursing clinical hours back into the organization each year. Equally
as impressive, NUH has realized a return on its investment in four years, with an annual savings of $161,750.
“One of the benefits of the application of Cius was that it allowed the senior
nurses to be out, mobile in the ward environment, and in total it added
approximately 8,000 senior clinical hours back into our organization in a year.”
— Andrew Fern, Director ICT Services, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust