After hearing of Chancellor, Rishi Sunaks plan to invest over £2 bn into IT and technology within the NHS, a study carried out by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, has found that nearly 3 million hours of NHS staffs time has been saved by using Teams to conduct meetings rather than picking up the phone or arranging in person meetings with their colleagues.
The software was rolled out by NHS Digital in March and was used by 1.3m users. Within 6 months it has been used to replace 14.5m phone calls and hosted more than 32m virtual meetings.
Chris Parsons, Head of Collaboration Services for NHS Digital said: “This has been a gamechanger that enables health and care colleagues to connect, communicate and collaborate effortlessly. Having over 1.6m colleagues on the same secure communications platform is enabling massive improvements in how the whole system can work more effectively together.
“The pandemic caused a seismic shift in how teams operated and worked together across the health and care system, having access to collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams has enabled that transition to be smooth and effective.”
The study revealed that using the software has been considerably more time efficient than regular ways of communicating. A minute is saved for every phone call that is made to a colleague and 5 minutes are saved for every in-person meeting.
The new budget for the NHS, in particular the money planned for the IT and digital side will help to continue and develop the use of software’s like Teams, further supporting NHS staff and allowing them to use their time effectively.
