Section 2: Non-clinical items
Ardens licences
The Digital Team would like to keep practices updated about the renewal of Ardens licences, most of which expire from June 2021 onwards. Ardens licences were bought with non-recurrent funds at year-end for a two year period from June 2019. The licence end date varies by practice; some already had the software in place and their licences were then extended from two years from when they expired.
At present, there are significant budget constraints due to increased Service Level Agreement support costs and the need to cover licencing costs which previously were covered centrally or are new since COVID, such as office 365 licencing, accurx licencing, econsult etc. The team is urgently undertaking a number of evaluations looking at the benefits of Ardens, MJOG, video consultations, SMS and total triage solutions in order to help prioritise the GPIT budget. Following the evaluations, they will make a number of recommendations for ongoing funding based on the outcomes and will consult on these recommendations with Primary Care Digital Group colleagues. The team will continue to keep practices updated and encourage feedback regarding the use of solutions, as this would be welcome as part of the evaluation processes.
Laptop usage
During the initial wave of the pandemic, the CCG distributed over 800 laptops to GP practices and, according to our information, most of these are being used. However, to ensure business continuity during the next phase, the IT team ask that practices please check that all laptops are being used and are able to connect to the network.
If you have laptops which are not being fully utilised, please inform the IT team so that they can be reallocated. At the moment there is a very limited stock of laptops in Gloucestershire and a significant lead time to source more.
Before requesting additional laptops please:
Review how all existing practice laptops are being used:
Do the right staff have laptops?
Are there any laptops with staff who were shielding which need to come back in?
Do you have any that are broken or not working properly? If so, please raise a ticket with CITS to see if they can be repaired
Do any staff have their own devices which could be used instead of a laptop? There are two options to connect to the practice with personal devices:
Away From My Desk accounts can be set up with tokens
VPN solution
Please email scwcsu.glosdt@nhs.net for more information.
Data Protection Officer Newsletter
The November 2020 issue is here.