The council's social care system had been recently introduced but there was no remote or mobile capability, which meant that forms were still being raised on paper and then had to be typed in back at base. To resolve this, the council piloted mobile social care software. Seventy social workers have tablet PCs on which they input assessment information while with the client. It allows them to schedule client visits before returning to the office. Also, under the single assessment project they can now run through a 35 page electronic form with the patient in the hospital and care home and then help to get the patient discharged more speedily than before, avoiding having to go back to the office to type up all the hand-written information.
The new system is also helping care workers to access corporate policies and procedures while in the client's home, which would obviously not be possible using the existing paper format. Capturing digital signatures allows the care workers to validate the completed assessment forms on the spot and, if necessary, forms can be printed on site.
Very early on in the project Ian Lett stipulated that to make remote and mobile working successful it was imperative that the council deployed strong encryption on every PC.
"Protecting patient data was of paramount importance, as we could not afford for any PC to get lost or stolen" says Lett. "We knew that social and care workers would be travelling around in cars, to people's homes and moving in and out of hospitals. We knew it would only be a matter of time before one or two would be lost or stolen. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if the information wasn't encrypted and got lost. Therefore, encrypting the information on every device had to be mandatory. I knew that other local authorities, government bodies and major corporations who have no choice but to use strong and reliable encryption, had bought it from Pointsec Mobile Technologies, so we took no risks and bought a licence for every tablet."
Lett continues: "Within a local authority you normally get quotes and test products from three different companies. However, I knew that Pointsec was the only encryption software that sat below the operating system and would therefore encrypt absolutely everything that resides on the tablet PC, so we opted for it immediately."
Safe and secure
Before the social and care workers can access the encrypted data they need to enter their user name and password. If this information is entered incorrectly the machine locks, and there is no way to circumvent the security.
"Our social and care workers have easily coped with the encryption as it is invisible to the user and doesn't slow the machine down. In fact, one of our partially-sighted users has recently commented how easy he finds the whole access process, as he literally only has to follow a couple of simple log-on commands." comments Lett. "I know I can sleep safe and sound at night because I don't need to fear the day a user loses a machine and it gets into the wrong hands resulting in a libel case or the information being publicly exposed in the media."
Looking to the future
The nomadic project has been used in Havering for over a year and has been well received by the management, project and care workers. Lett explains: "We've had very few problems with the project or software. In fact I believe we've only taken about two calls on our help desk where people have come unstuck by being locked out or forgetting their passwords. The problems have been resolved in about 10 minutes, as the help desk can talk them through the access process very easily."
Havering is now in the process of building a business case to purchase more licences for workers in the field such as those in building control, planning and trading standards.
Yvonne Eskenzi interviewed Ian Lett, senior information governance officer at Havering Borough Council, www.havering.gov.uk
