Internet of Things implementation: Lessons learned

This report was commissioned by the NHS England Future Connectivity Programme and produced in collaboration with Milton Keynes University Hospitals Foundation Trust and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

The content is intended to be supplier and vendor agnostic, which means NHS England do not endorse any specific companies, innovations, or approaches. Any mention of, or link to, a specific supplier or product does not constitute an endorsement from NHS England.

For clarity any recommendations made in this report are those of the report authors and do not represent any mandatory policy, or requirement from NHS England.

Any enquiries on the content of the report should be directed to the NHS England Future Connectivity Programme [email protected] 

The following pages contain a summary of the report content. The link to the full report is available at the bottom of this page.

The report details several implementations and proof of concept trials of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in NHS care settings across Milton Keynes and Nottingham University Hospitals, to deliver improved staff and patient experience, with a focus on the lessons learned from these projects.

Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (MKUH) is a medium sized general hospital that provides a full range of acute hospital services and an increasing number of specialist services to the growing population of Milton Keynes and the surrounding area. With around 550 beds and employing more than 4,000 staff, the hospital sees and treats more than 400,000 outpatients and more than 100,000 emergency department patients each year.

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) is a teaching hospital and cares for more than one million people a year across Nottingham City Hospital, the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC), Ropewalk House and in the community. NUH have more than 19,000 staff and 750 volunteers and are the largest employer in Nottinghamshire and one of the biggest and busiest NHS trusts in the country. As a specialist centre for a range of national and internationally renowned services, including stroke, renal, neurosciences and cancer services, the trust cares for people from across the East Midlands and beyond.

Both trusts were aware of the opportunities provided by Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and were keen to take advantage of them to improve staff and patient experience. This report sets out how they faced and learned from challenges with securing funding, implementing these technologies, demonstrating and measuring their benefits, and engaging patients and staff with the new technologies.

MKUH and NUH needed to investigate what infrastructure and connectivity were required in new build and legacy estates to enable IoT and fabric technologies, and understand the costs and capabilities of these to make sure they selected and implemented the best fits for their needs.

The trusts wanted to better understand these technologies through trials and smaller deployments which were co-designed in partnership with staff, patients, academic and commercial partners to support the following health benefit areas.

For more on IoT technology and the connectivity that enables it we recommend you read An introduction to Internet of Things in health.

The full Lessons Learned from IoT report is available on the FutureNHS collaboration platform (FutureNHS login required) containing further detail and access to the appendices including:

• Silent Hospitals summary report
• Silent Hospitals project overview
• National Rehabilitation Centre overview