MEDICA Group completes move to Redcentric

MEDICA Group, the UK’s largest teleradiology provider, has signed a £1.1m, five-year connectivity deal with IT and N3 services provider Redcentric. The deal will provide super-fast and secure 24x7 access to radiology and imaging reporting to over 50% of NHS trusts across the UK.

The deal with MEDICA to provide access to N3 - the NHS network - will mean that the NHS benefits from an improved radiology reporting service from MEDICA’s expert radiologists. This provides hospitals and other healthcare organisations with rapid access to radiologists with subspecialty expertise, 24x7. On average MEDICA is now providing reports for the most urgent cases, NightHawk patients, in less than 20 minutes to over 50 NHS hospitals.

Redcentric’s N3 access service provides MEDICA’s customers with enhanced network resilience, availability, security and performance. This means that hospitals and NHS trusts are assured of receiving reports and diagnostics, as they’re needed. Disaster recovery capabilities ensure that MEDICA’s service is protected in the event of a network issue. Redcentric’s service is highly scalable and capable of managing peaks in demand. For MEDICA’s team of radiologists this means the ability to improve performance and ultimately patient care.

Redcentric already supplies MEDICA with SIP trunks to give them Voice over Internet Protocol, which enables online telephone services. MEDICA chose to extend the relationship to cover N3 services due to Redcentric’s experience of delivering more than 10,000 connections to the network as well as its ability to provide stability, availability and high levels of uptime (99.99%) and support.

The N3 network, part of the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), provides information, data and IT systems for healthcare professionals. Redcentric’s N3 service gives MEDICA secure, reliable and high-bandwidth broadband to connect them with NHS organisations UK wide. Redcentric provides MEDICA with primary servers based at its data centre (DC) in Reading, with a failover back up from its Harrogate DC.

John Graham, CEO from MEDICA comments, “Trust is very important for us and our clients. We are dedicated to delivering vital radiology reporting services to the NHS and other healthcare providers and this deal with Redcentric acts to further improve our commitment to efficiency and quality. Having already worked successfully with Redcentric we knew that we could trust them to support us in the delivery of this commitment.”

Andy Mills, Group Sales Director from Redcentric adds, “We provide over 10,000 N3 connections on behalf of our customers. This experience means that we’re able to demonstrate a commitment to delivering reliable, secure, high-bandwidth N3 connections that help companies like MEDICA to improve the way they conduct business with the NHS. Our tried-and-tested approach to deployment and support provided MEDICA with the assurance that we can deliver on their expectations.”

In addition to N3 access services, the HSCIC granted Redcentric aggregator status for the N3 network in 2014. As one of only two approved commercial aggregators Redcentric’s dedicated N3 Information Governance team works with customers to dramatically reduce the time taken to gain an N3 connection - reducing the successful N3 application process from months to weeks.