Chelsea & Westminster Hospital goes live with all-operator mobile

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has entered into a partnership with connectivity infrastructure-as-a-service provider Freshwave to deploy a 4G distributed antenna system (DAS).

In operation at its West London neighbourhood since the 1870s, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Trust is one of the leading medical organisations in England, employing 7,500 staff across its two main hospital sites – Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital – as well as community-based clinics in North West London. It delivers care to a community of more than 1.5 million people.

Both hospitals feature major A&E departments, treating 270,000 patients annually, and the trust runs the second-largest maternity service in England, delivering 10,500 babies each year. Specialist services include a burns service – said to be the leading centre in London and the South East – as well as children’s inpatient and outpatient services, and specialist HIV and sexual health services.

A key driver for the upgrade is the UK government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England, which includes an ambition to shift services from analogue to digital. Recently, the digital arm of the UK’s health service, NHS Online, announced an “online hospital” that will not have a physical site, instead digitally connecting patients to expert clinicians anywhere in England.

Freshwave believes having the right hospital connectivity in place to facilitate these ambitions is essential. Hospitals, with their thick walls and complex layouts, often block mobile signal from penetrating from outdoors. This leaves mobile devices inside without the connectivity they need to operate effectively, as hospital Wi-Fi is sometimes overburdened to the point of failure.

Furthermore, the comms tech provider’s healthcare Mobile connectivity ROI index, which surveyed 100 leaders across NHS and healthcare organisations, revealed that improving indoor mobile connectivity could unlock £3.74bn in value for the sector. This nearly matches the £3.8bn leaders estimate is currently lost due to poor connectivity.

Boosting workforce productivity was identified in the survey as the top opportunity, with 62% of respondents highlighting it as a key benefit of enhanced 4G and 5G coverage. Meanwhile, 65% of healthcare organisations say the growing demand for remote patient monitoring and management is driving the need for better indoor mobile connectivity.

For its part, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital says that with the new network staff, patients and visitors alike are now benefitting from assured all-operator mobile connectivity no matter which network (EE, Virgin Media O2, or VodafoneThree) they are on.

A dedicated indoor multi-operator mobile system connects securely into the operators’ networks, something which is said to guarantee a “robust” quality of service. It is attributed with allowing teams to communicate using a variety of technologies and for peer-to-peer healthcare messaging apps to work together “seamlessly” so clinicians and staff don’t have to waste time trying to find a place in the hospital with the right connectivity. 

The result is that clinicians and staff can work more efficiently and spend more time with patients. It also allows patients and visitors to stay in touch with loved ones while in hospital.

Commenting on the deployment, John Wintour-Pittom, North West London acute provider collaborative deputy chief information officer and trust director of ICT, said: “Digital tools … enable streamlined collaboration between teams caring for patients, but need a resilient mobile connectivity layer so they can function at all times. Our fantastic IT team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, together with colleagues from Estates, have worked extremely hard on this project, and we are pleased to see the system is now live and benefitting colleagues and patients.” 

Freshwave CEO Simon Frumkin added: “We’re delighted to have brought another NHS hospital all-operator mobile connectivity. By bringing mobile coverage indoors, we’re ensuring that staff can access critical digital tools without interruption, patients can stay connected with their families, and hospital operations run more smoothly. Projects like this demonstrate how tailored connectivity solutions can make a real difference in healthcare, supporting better experiences for everyone on site.”