Technology continues to enhance operations within the NHS with systems increasing operational knowledge and efficiency. Employee access and security remain critical considerations with the NHS pushing for IT departments to have better control over individual users and increased visibility of access.
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was faced with the challenge of bringing together multiple user profiles across a growing number of systems, so turned to BDS Solutions to help support its identity management.
Martyn Mckecknie, Digital Identity Manager for the Trust, said: “With NHS users now being expected to access dozens of systems and good database design principles encouraging us to use single random and persistent identifiers, it makes sense that we should look to bond these systems together, like a big relational database, linked via a common primary key.”
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust supports a local population of 1.6 million across Lancashire and South Cumbria. It has an estimated 17 million annual visitors, as well as supporting community health services.
With an increasing number of systems and a vast user-base, user management is a complex challenge for any NHS organisation. BDS Solutions was able to quickly implement its Personal Digital Identity (PDI) solution to improve efficiency and security.
PDI is an intelligent matching engine that automatically links multiple systems to determine whether entries relate to an existing contact or a new identity needs to be created. Working alongside BDS Solutions’ Directory Manager, PDI ensures a unique record for each person that integrates identities from all the various systems.
“Since the introduction of PDI our system administrators can easily, and at any point, identify all of the currently integrated systems that a user had/has access to, as well as the specific digital identity within each particular system,” explained Martyn.
This solution has enabled Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to access and analyse data more readily, increase control over account provisioning, and avoid the creation of duplicate accounts.
The Trust has also been able to maximise security, ensure changes are efficiently applied across systems and closely control accounts, minimising the risk of system misuse. “PDI has quickly and cost effectively addressed a fundamental identity management issue,” added Martyn.