Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust selects Riverbed

Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) – one of the largest National Health Service (NHS) community health providers in the UK – has deployed Riverbed's Alluvio™ Aternity Digital Experience Management (DEM) to support its digital experience strategy. The solution enables KCHFT to gain visibility into all its applications and employee devices, and to proactively troubleshoot and auto-remediate any incidents, in order to optimize the digital experience for clinicians, and create efficient patient pathways. Alluvio Aternity, an industry-leading DEM solution, is part of the Alluvio Unified Observability portfolio from Riverbed.

LinkedIn:  Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust lowers asset refresh costs and enhances the digital experience for clinicians by improving the quality of its IT services with Alluvio Aternity by Riverbed:  [link to be inserted once embargo lifted]

KCHFT focuses on practitioner-led and therapy-focused healthcare services, serving a population of about 1.4 million, and receiving over 2 million patients each year. The IT team at KCHFT is responsible for over 5,000 staff, including doctors, community nurses, and many other healthcare professionals, as well as hundreds of applications and hardware assets. It also has an ambitious goal of ultimately helping KCHFT to achieve its vision ‘to be the provider of choice by delivering excellent care and improving the health of its communities.’

The challenge in achieving this vision is that KCHFT’s IT team previously had limited visibility of the issues affecting the performance of applications and employee devices. As a result, it took time to determine the root cause of performance problems affecting staff and patient journeys.  Furthermore, it was critical for KCHFT to understand the performance of its Electronic Patient Records (EPR) system and whether clinicians were gaining instant access in real-time and the potential impact on how patient care was being delivered.

After careful evaluation, KCHFT chose to purchase the Alluvio Aternity Digital Experience Management (DEM) solution from Riverbed, deploying 6,200 licenses. The value was immediately apparent. Not only was the KCHFT team able to access the cloud environment in less than five minutes, but it also took almost no time to deploy the agent to all the endpoints, from where the IT team had visibility into the data. Almost immediately, the IT team could see trends that sparked conversations about driving better end-user experiences for clinicians and creating more efficient and safer patient pathways.

Alluvio Aternity has been configured to give the IT team early insight into any issues along with trend performance from customizable dashboards and alerts reducing the risk of any digital challenges. At the same time, the Aternity solution provides KCHFT with auto-remediation capabilities, which helped reduce service desk tickets and automatically resolve IT-related issues before users even become aware.

“There have been several occasions where Alluvio Aternity alerted us hours before our service desk received a call regarding incidents,” comments Darren Spinks, Head of IT Operations at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust. “With the Alluvio Aternity solution from Riverbed, we don't need to wait for a user to tell us there is a problem. It informs us of the issue, its impact, and the implications regarding time and cost. These actionable insights enable us to proactively solve problems, and therefore prevent negative digital experiences for clinicians and patients.”

Impressively, Alluvio Aternity, also allowed the KCHFT IT team to make better-informed decisions about IT investments. The team was able to revise its asset refresh plan based on device performance. The solution showed the team that they would not need to replace 42% of KCHFT’s 1,784 devices aged five years or older. This cost-saving means that the IT team has already realised its return on investment in Alluvio Aternity. Additionally, the KCHFT IT team also uses the solution to monitor its endpoints’ power consumption and adjust energy usage accordingly to help reduce its carbon footprint. This supports the NHS sustainability agenda of becoming the world’s first net zero carbon health service.

Spinks continues: “The Trust is renowned for its focus on patient experience, innovation, and dynamism. To achieve this, clinicians require a seamless end-user experience – using technology to enhance patient safety and drive efficiency into pathways. It’s this enablement of intellectual exchange that we required most from a technology partner. From the outset, Riverbed proved that the Alluvio Aternity solution would provide our clinicians and patients with the rich user experience they are demanding while safeguarding our patients. At the same time, Riverbed demonstrated that it understood the pressured work environment we operate in. Ultimately, given the success of Alluvio Aternity, it will continue to feature in KCHFT’s plans for the future, including further investment in Riverbed’s Alluvio Unified Observability portfolio.”

John Atkinson, Director Solutions Engineering, UK&I at Riverbed, adds: “The best healthcare providers thrive on the principles of patient safety, efficiency, and innovation. In today’s healthcare industry, the best providers continue to strive to give their clinicians and patients world-class experiences and unified observability technology is at the heart of making this possible. Our leading Alluvio Aternity solutions will give IT teams greater visibility and insights of applications and employee devices to optimize digital experiences and efficiency, help to auto-remediate and troubleshoot issues, and also lower costs. KCHFT is taking great strides in making its vision of providing excellent care and improving the health of its communities come to life in a smarter way, and we’re very proud to be partnering with them on this journey."