20 ^th May 2003

NOBLE’S SWITCHBOARD POINTS THE WAY AHEAD FOR GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS - Department of Health and Social Security - Health Services Division News Release

The state-of-the-art switchboard system being installed at Noble’s Hospital in Braddan represents the starting point for a new concept in telephony being introduced gradually by the Manx Government.

The Voice Over IP (Internet Protocol) system uses fibre optic cabling already installed during the hospital’s construction to transfer calls around the building. Although staff and callers to the hospital will not notice any difference the system is much more resilient due to the back-up features available.

Graham Cain, senior business analyst at Noble’s Hospital, explains:

“This is the way the telecommunications industry is going and whenever a suitable opportunity arises - through the transfer of a department to a new building, for example - it is the Government’s strategy to upgrade to this system. The hospital will be the first major site to take it on board.

“What it means in effect is that the voice and data systems will be combined, leading to a reduction in maintenance costs. Up to now they have been separate with different hardware and different cabling inside the building, supplied and managed by different people. That will all change, enabling us to introduce a lot of innovations once it is all in place - such as the integration of patient care information. Our first objective is to set the groundwork in place but the long term benefits for our clinical service to patients are enormous.

“While its versatility is obviously one of the main factors, another major consideration is the resilience aspect.”

Currently, Noble’s has a standard Government switchboard. There are telephone systems at Ramsey Cottage Hospital, Ballamona and Noble’s which, although separate, have links to the others. If one of them fails an operator service can be instituted from one of the other sites until such time as Manx Telecom can repair the damage.

Under the new solution there are two computer servers which look after the telephone exchange at Braddan. The servers act on a cluster basis so if either fails, the other one will continue to run the service during the down time. Consequently, there should never be a situation where telephony is off at the new hospital.

Said Mr Cain: “The intention is to provide this resilience throughout the Government’s telephone service. The whole of the system will be clustered in this way so that there should not be a single point of failure anywhere on the network.”

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