Hitachi Vantara (Hitachi) Case Studies Public Health England Enhances Cancer Screening Programme with Hitachi Services
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Public Health England Enhances Cancer Screening Programme with Hitachi Services

Hitachi Vantara (Hitachi)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Public Cloud
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Education
Healthcare & Hospitals
Quality Assurance
Disease Tracking
Virtual Training
System Integration
Training
The NHS National Breast Screening Programme, managed by Public Health England (PHE), screens 2.5 million women annually, saving approximately 1,300 lives each year. The programme relies heavily on the National Breast Screening System (NBSS), a critical IT system that supports all administrative activities, from appointment handling to patient evaluation. With 78 instances on local hospital networks and a user base of around 4,000 NHS staff, the NBSS must be highly available, secure, and regularly updated. However, the NBSS was built in the early 2000s on a legacy platform, which posed challenges in supporting the evolution of the programme and new technologies. Furthermore, the existing support contract was no longer adequate, and PHE needed a new partner to manage the system without losing the knowledge and skills held by team members.
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Public Health England (PHE) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom that began operating in April 2013. Its formation came as a result of reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies. PHE's mission is to protect and improve the nation's health and to address inequalities, working with national and local government, the NHS, industry, academia, the public and the voluntary and community sector.
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Public Health England partnered with Hitachi Vantara in 2015 to manage and support the NBSS. Members of the original support team were transferred to Hitachi, ensuring continuity of knowledge and skills. Hitachi provides an ITIL-aligned managed service, including incident, change, problem, infrastructure, and release management. All user tickets are processed via the Hitachi service desk, with a two-hour resolution for P1 incidents. The support team, working from a secure room, is responsible for regularly updating the platform to respond to changing user needs and new technologies. Hitachi has also introduced a number of service innovations and encourages users and team members to submit ideas for review. Service improvements include moving to a DevOps hybrid organisation model, enhancing processes for knowledge management, and starting an End User Training Service. As part of the training service, Hitachi conducted a training needs analysis and launched a series of training articles to drive consistent working practices and reduce call volumes.
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The partnership with Hitachi Vantara has enabled Public Health England to safeguard the efficiency of the NHS National Breast Screening Programme. With a highly available NBSS, screening invites are prompt, data is consistent, and referrals are accurate. The quality of the managed service is verified by bi-annual customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys and regular user satisfaction (USAT) monitoring. The team also works on occasional bespoke projects outside of core service, supporting the NHS when Trusts operationally merge to manage and protect data within NBSS. The introduction of a series of training articles and a bi-annual newsletter keeps users up to date on service enhancements and system updates, driving consistent working practices and reducing call volumes.
Improved availability of National Breast Screening System (NBSS).
Better user experience for 4,000 NHS staff.
Consistent and reliable screening process for 2.5 million women a year.
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