The Mid Yorkshire Teaching National Health Service (NHS) Trust's Dewsbury and District Hospital in the UK has a new 'digital data center' (DDC).
The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NaHS Trust's Dewsbury and District Hospital in the UK has a new 'digital data center' (DDC).
Those servers will store and manage the hospital's data and support the 24/7 operations of a range of digital systems used for both clinical and non-clinical activities.
The DDC will be replacing the hospital's former data center, which has become outdated and was not able to be expanded as it was within an existing hospital building. According to the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, the data center had experienced outages during summer months in the past due to air conditioning issues.
It is hoped that the data center will provide crucial improvements to the trust's IT-related infrastructure and performance, helping both patients and staff. Additionally, the increased capacity will enable the trust to use increasingly advanced technologies.
In order to deploy the data center, the Trust used a 300-tonne crane to physically install the facility. The project has worked with suppliers including Dell, Schneider Electric, Daisy, and BCS.
Mat Ramskill, head of digital platforms, said: “Digital transformation in healthcare is a key focus for the NHS and for us at Mid Yorkshire. The new digital data center will support the delivery of this across the Trust by enabling us to take full advantage of all appropriate technological opportunities.
“The data center is essential to ensuring key services and applications are available and efficient 24 hours a day.”
Kat Poole, associate director of Infrastructure: Digital, added: “It is vital that we meet the challenge of improving patient outcomes and experience through maximizing the potential benefits of new technologies. Future-proofing our digital infrastructure with leading-edge support will be crucial to achieving this.
“It has been a fantastic team effort with colleagues working tirelessly to create this new state-of-the-art facility that will benefit patients and almost every single colleague across the Trust.”
Outages at hospitals can have significant impacts on patient well-being. In 2022, the UK's London-based Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust experienced a significant outage during the UK heatwave, resulting in around $1.7m in costs for the NHS.
In 2023, Nottingham University Hospital suffered an IT outage after power failed, impacting the site's blood transfusion system. On the other side of the globe, major outages were suffered at New Zealand and Australian hospitals.
In January of this year, it was confirmed that the UK's NHS has decommissioned its data centers hosting the NHS Spine system following a cloud migration conducted in October 2023.
