Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust chose the Onesign system to reduce the number of passwords staff are required to remember when accessing applications. But, by replacing up to 12 passwords with a single sign-on system, the trust has found it can also save money on calls to IT helpdesks.
Managers now expect to be able to permanently free up one member of the hospital’s helpdesk team to focus on more valuable, project-based activities.
An initial pilot involving 20 members of staff and ten applications was such a success that the trust now plans to roll the scheme out to all 1,000 of its clinical and non-clinical staff.
It is also planning to trial a biometric system in the accident & emergency department as part of an overall drive to tighten IT security in the hospital.
“Single sign-on really is the way of the future,” said Dr Zafar Chaudry, director of information management & technology at the hospital.
“We were concerned not only at how frustrated staff were becoming with the sheer amount of passwords they had to remember, but also at the fact that they were often resorting to writing passwords down.
“It was important to us that any approach we took should not be disruptive to end-users. Now our staff particularly like the fact they can perform password resets themselves if they need them.”
Imprivata’s president and CEO, Omar Hussain, said the problems faced by Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust are typical of healthcare and medical organisations across the UK.
“Where hospital employees have access to sensitive patient data through a number of different applications, finding a workable way to manage this effectively through passwords can be problematic,” he said.
He claimed OneSign’s support for a wide range of authentication methods like password tokens and the NHS smartcard has made it a popular choice among healthcare professionals.
Other NHS Trusts, including Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Nottingham University Hospital and Lewisham Primary Care Trust, are also using the OneSign system.
