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Creating Secure Remote Access During COVID-19

Healthcare

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Overview

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust serves as a crucial healthcare provider in the Northwest, delivering essential medical services to over 1.5 million people across Lancashire and South Cumbria. The Trust also plays a vital role in medical education, training students from the University of Manchester and St. Andrews University. As a designated regional hub for COVID-19 testing, their trauma centre and leading pathology services became even more critical during the pandemic. NHS Lancashire required secure remote access throughout the pandemic.

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The Challenge

When COVID-19 emerged, the Trust faced an unprecedented challenge in creating secure remote access for their workforce.

The existing remote access system could only support up to 500 concurrent users, severely limiting their ability to implement effective work-from-home policies. The Trust needed a robust solution for creating secure remote access during Covid-19 that could handle a significant increase in users without compromising security or performance. This was particularly crucial for their trauma centre and COVID-19 testing hub operations.

Some of our people still needed to be on site. However, in order to minimise the risk of infection, clinical and administrative staff were asked to work from home where feasible.

Saeed Umar, Head of Technical Services
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

FullProxy's Solution

Fortunately, the Trust’s previous collaboration with FullProxy and F5 had laid the groundwork for creating secure remote access during this time. The year before, we had implemented F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) to secure, simplify and centralise access to apps, APIs and data, regardless of user or application location.

When the pandemic hit, our team rapidly responded to upgrade this existing system. Within hours of the Trust’s request, FullProxy and F5 collaborated to enhance the infrastructure, expanding capacity from 500 to 2,000 concurrent remote users. This swift action was crucial in creating secure remote access during Covid-19 for the Trust’s essential healthcare operations.

Key components included:

  • Rapid system upgrade to accommodate increased user capacity
  • Enhanced security measures to protect sensitive healthcare data
  • Streamlined access to critical applications and systems
  • Implementation of robust authentication protocols
  • Integration with existing healthcare systems

Results and Benefits

The success of creating secure remote access during COVID-19 exceeded expectations.

The implementation delivered several crucial benefits:

  • Seamless scaling from 70 to 700+ concurrent users during peak pandemic periods
  • Uninterrupted access to critical healthcare applications
  • Enhanced collaboration through Microsoft Teams integration
  • Improved staff morale and work-life balance
  • Zero negative impact on operational efficiency

The solution’s success has led the Trust to consider permanent remote working options for some staff, potentially generating significant cost savings in physical infrastructure and facilities management.

“Even when our remote users increased by ten times there was no impact on the user experience. Our staff were so impressed they were even talking about it on social media”

Jonathan Wood, Deputy CEO
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Why FullProxy?

Our existing relationship with the Trust and understanding of their infrastructure proved invaluable in rapidly creating secure remote access during Covid-19. The successful collaboration between FullProxy, F5, and the Trust demonstrated our ability to deliver critical solutions under extreme time pressure.

This project showcases FullProxy’s expertise in creating secure remote access solutions that meet the unique challenges of healthcare organisations. Our rapid response and effective implementation ensured that Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust could continue providing essential healthcare services throughout the pandemic while keeping their staff safe and connected.

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