Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust is set to save
£20,000 a year and about 30 minutes a day for each staff member by
implementing asingle sign-on system.
The trust plans to expand its deployment of
Imprivata's Onesign access management appliance from a pilot of
20 users to 1,000 users in the next month.
The move is part of an indepenedent initiative by the trust to
cut costs and improve efficiency, but follows similar
implementations at other NHS organisations, which have been
encouraged to address the problem of multiple passwords.
The project, which will give users access to five clinical and
five non-clinical computer systems with a single sign on, was
initially aimed at saving staff around half an hour a day in
signing on to each individual applications and eliminate the burden
of remembering long and difficult passwords.
"However, we also expect to save £20,000 a year by reducing the
number of calls to our helpdesk by half by virtually eliminating
the need for password resets and freeing up an IT staff member to
be deployed elsewhere," said Zafar Chaudry, director for
information management and technology at the trust.
The system asks users five authentication questions during at
setup and these are then use to authenticate users in future,
enabling to reset passwords themselves without involving help desk
staff.
Chaudry said there were several other key reasons for choosing
the Imprivata single sign on system.
"First, it is the only cost effective solution we considered
that could work with the trust's US-built Meditech hospital
information system. Second, it is a single appliance that simply
plugs into our network. And, third, the system is easy to use and
needs little training, which is a real benefit to our relatively
small IT team."
The Trust expects to save time and increase security by using
the system's ability to use
RFID and biometric technology for authentication. The RFID
facility will be made available to all clinical staff, about 15% of
the trust's computer users.
"Computer systems will detect the presence of clinical staff
using wireless signals and sign them on to the appropriate systems,
but will also automatically sign them off when they move away,
increasing security," said Chaudry.
The trust also plans to install fingerprint scanners in its
accident and emergency department in future as part of an overall
drive to tighten security around IT systems.