Jersey Telecom (JT) has launched its latest service for Channel Island business customers, following a successful trial which took place during lockdown, enabling key hospital teams to continue their essential work from home.
JT’s new SD-WAN – Software-Defined Wide Area Network – allowed Jersey’s radiologists to carry out valuable everyday activities securely from their homes, when restrictions meant they couldn’t go to work. This included reviewing scans and x-rays to advise the team at the hospital over the secure link, without patient confidentiality or safety being compromised.
At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, the Government of Jersey’s Digital Health Team asked JT to help find a solution for team members to work from home to ensure patient diagnosis wasn’t hindered. The SD-WAN solution was adapted so that six Consultant Radiologists had secure and fast network access by simply plugging the devices into their home broadband routers.
Daragh McDermott, Managing Director JT, Channel Islands said: “We were in the final phase of our SD-WAN project when the Government asked if we could help essential care workers who, because of COVID-19, were struggling with real emergencies. Although the radiologists were using a dedicated secure connection to their corporate network and systems, the speed with which they needed to communicate became critical. Ordinarily, SD-WAN would be used to connect remote offices to company HQs, but the JT solution is flexible enough to deploy in their homes. All they had to do was plug them in and the SD-WAN box did the rest, creating a fast, super secure network over broadband.”
The success of the trial can be illustrated by the fact that the surgeons at the General Hospital were able to receive live information direct from a radiologist while they were in theatre.
Dr Chris Hare, Consultant Radiologist, Jersey General Hospital, said: “I spent a full weekend on-call deliberately reporting all emergency scans from home. There were quite a few and they were complex. With JT’s SD-WAN, it was possible to review scans while patients were still on the table enabling rapid decisions about whether more was needed to be done or if they could return to their ward. With the system we had in place previously I would never have even considered attempting this, they were too slow, making it quicker for me to drive to work. But this new solution from JT is a gamechanger”.
