The NHS wants digital productivity. First, it needs the networks to carry it

NHS England is increasingly turning to technology to achieve its productivity targets. Yet as the digital load increases at healthcare facilities – with connected devices, EPRs, AI, automation and more – there’s one core technical pillar that often gets overlooked: the network

England’s NHS has a firm target to improve yearly productivity by 2%, feeding into their broader 10-Year Health Plan for England. Investment in technology is a core part of that roadmap. The service’s own ‘What Good Looks Like’ framework directly names network infrastructure as core to a modern health service. And they’re right.

Yet most conversations about digital transformation still start somewhere else.

When it comes to upgrading any organisation’s tech, the most visible tech usually gets the most attention: PCs, laptops, software, AI implementation – expanding to countless other devices like WOWs, voice devices, or patient monitors in healthcare settings. This approach isn’t incorrect per se, but any IT is only as good as the network it sits on.

In wrapping up the Frontline Digitisation Programme that drove the recent, largely successful push for EPR adoption, Samantha Jones, the programme’s Accounting Officer, stated that “significant central support will be required in future years […] including investment in hosting, networks and end-user devices.”

That mention of networks is no minor detail. It’s a piece of the puzzle that many trusts still treat as an afterthought.

Networks: The regularly forgotten cornerstone to great IT

As more devices and solutions are incorporated into the NHS’s digital improvement measures, they place an increasing load on networks at NHS facilities across the country. As solutions like EPR, electronic prescribing, clinical voice communication, asset tracking, smart medical devices, automation, and AI tools become the norm, each trust’s dependency on connectivity – especially Wi-Fi connectivity – grows.

The bar keeps rising for what healthcare institutions’ networks must reliably support. Yet those networks themselves are often left to lag behind.

Having a ‘good’ network is no longer as simple as ensuring that staff laptops have a serviceable Wi-Fi connection across a campus. There’s a burden of connectivity placed onto smaller mobile and wireless devices at scale – often devices that rely on consistent voice- grade connectivity to achieve critical patient outcomes.

In cases like these, networks need to be designed and tested around the weakest critical device, rather than the typical IT.

Designing networks for the smallest, most critical device

In many healthcare settings, ensuring connectivity to the smallest, most mobile devices is absolutely critical. A specialist NHS trust in North London came to Panacea Networking with a handful of network problems – not least was the connectivity of their emergency voice communication badges.

Badge users commonly reported frequent Wi-Fi roaming dropouts, coverage blackspots, and rapid battery drain, despite the devices coming from a widely trusted, industry-leading manufacturer. Considering these devices can be so critical to patient outcomes, solving these issues was of paramount importance.

Rather than simply adding more Wi-Fi access points or increasing transmit power, we reviewed how the badges were actually behaving. This exposed a number of issues, including a Wi-Fi channel clash and settings that were making the badges’ roaming behaviour unpredictable – making them work harder and drain power faster.

Projects like these prove that wireless provision is often much more than the simple matter of coverage. Building on the solid foundations created by restructuring their network’s core, we carefully planned the entire radio frequency environment around usage patterns, device mix, and voice-grade reliability.

Sound network infrastructure, with sound Wi-Fi design layered on top, is now a non-negotiable consideration across healthcare facilities. With patient-critical Wi-Fi-connected devices now mainstream, this shows a pattern of clinical wireless use cases where older, lower-bandwidth Wi-Fi installations might not cut it.

As the North London trust has shown, having ‘usable’ network coverage is not necessarily the same as having coverage fit for specific, future-proofed clinical purposes.

The Panacea to healthcare network upgrade fears

Updating or migrating an NHS network undoubtedly comes with a lot of clinically sensitive risk, leading many trusts to simply make do with a network that’s long been past its limit. But ageing IT infrastructure is precisely the issue that many NHS trusts are wrangling with. Ignoring the issue is never the cure – but there are ways to solve it without exposing yourself to massive risk.

Any reliable networking provider will tell you that good rollout planning and a phased, parallel build-out significantly reduces the risk of a nail-biting ‘all or nothing’ switchover moment – where multiple, critical issues can surface simultaneously. Panacea Networking generally approaches complex, high- dependency network migrations by switching over carefully planned sections of the network in a methodical, piecemeal way, making every step contained and reversible.

As an Extreme Networks Diamond Partner, we can also say our vendor’s infrastructure allays some resourcing fears. For one, Extreme Fabric technology allows for increased network automation, minimising manual configuration and reducing the burden on often stretched NHS trust IT departments.

Achieving stable, modern, fit for purpose networks across all of NHS England’s trusts is foundational to its ongoing operational and clinical productivity goals. But simply building those future-ready networks is just the beginning.

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