#1 Global Leader in Data Resilience

With cyber-attacks across the NHS rising — the Royal Wolverhampton Trust deploys Veeam for data resilience

Cutting data recovery times from days to hours and often much less helps us maintain a high continuity of service. With Veeam, we’re empowering users to provide exceptional healthcare services without pause.
John Lau
Server Engineer, Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust

The Business Challenge

Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust is responsible for managing ever-growing sensitive patient data. With many systems critical to day-to-day operations, losing access to data is increasingly unimaginable for the Trust’s 6,000 users.

“A system outage could cause patient issues and prevent medicine being prescribed,” said John Lau, Server Engineer at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust. “Even historical records are crucial because doctors need to see notes from previous appointments when assessing patients’ needs.”

Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust backs up data for hospitals and 50 clinics. Each clinic had an on-site server that the team backed up to tape. This caused difficulties for reception teams as they had to manually replace the tapes, often resulting in lengthy phone calls with the Trust’s IT team to troubleshoot issues.

Previously, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust used a variety of backup solutions including Quest NetVault and Veritas Backup Exec for its physical servers, and Veeam for its virtual environment.

“We’re just a team of eight, which made it a challenge to make sure backups are complete within scheduled windows,” said Lau. “With data availability critical to both employees and patients, and the risk of cyber-attack growing, we wanted to consolidate on one single, powerful data protection solution.”

The Veeam Solution

Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust chose Veeam to enable it to deliver high-quality patient care round- the-clock. The organization made the decision based on a recommendation from its long- standing partner, PrimeSys.

“Veeam was the best option for consolidating our approach to data protection because we knew firsthand that it offered high performance and efficiency,” said Lau. “Since first deploying it six years previously, Veeam introduced a feature that allows us to back up VMs directly to tape, which is a big plus for us.”

With fewer data protection systems to manage, the Trust’s IT team saved time immediately. Veeam became a ‘set and forget’ solution that always completes backups for both hospitals and clinics in the scheduled timeframes. The Trust now stores 30 days of data on fast-access ExaGrid storage, which has cut data recovery times significantly.

“Rather than the time-consuming process of finding the right tape to recover data, we now have much more granular, automated recovery capabilities thanks to Veeam,” said Lau. “It now takes us hours instead of days, which makes a big difference to seamless healthcare delivery.”

The Royal Wolverhampton Trust has also automated data protection for the 50 clinics it supports in the local area. The move is saving time and minimizing disruption for both the Trust’s IT team and the clinics’ on-site employees.

“Instead of local clinic teams managing on-site backups to tape, we now handle this centrally using Veeam,” said Lau. “As a result, clinic employees can focus on their daily roles and not worry about interruptions to data availability. It also means they’re not calling us with queries, tying up the phone line that patients call in on. And Veeam makes the process so simple that the overall administrative burden on our team is less even though we’ve taken on more responsibility.”

With healthcare ransomware stories often making the news, security is a huge priority for any NHS trust. Veeam is contributing to the confidence Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust has about its data storage.

The Results

  • Supports delivery of exceptional healthcare services by ensuring patient data is available 24/7. 
    Cutting data recovery times from days to hours and often much less helps us maintain a high continuity of service,” said Lau. “With Veeam, we’re empowering users to provide exceptional healthcare services without pause.”
  • Enhances the Trust’s ability to recover from cyber-attack through immutable backups. 
    Conscious of cyber-attack risk, and knowing how sensitive patient data is, being able to rely on immutable backups and encrypting all off-site data provides significant peace of mind to the Trust.
  • Increases efficiency by cutting time taken to back up data from 50 local clinics by 75%. 
    The Trust is saving time for both its IT and clinic teams with Veeam, as well as freeing up phone lines for patients.

Company:

One of the largest healthcare providers in the West Midlands, UK, Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust employs over 9,400 people and has more than 850 beds at its New Cross site, 56 at West Park Hospital and 54 at Cannock Chase Hospital. It provides a range of acute and community healthcare services including maternity, accident and emergency, critical care, outpatients, rehabilitation and therapy.

Challenge:

Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust must keep critical systems running to maintain quality care in its hospitals and outpatient surgeries. With the risk of cyber-attack growing, the organization feared a system outage causing untold disruption. It looked to drive efficiencies and provide more available, secure IT services.

Results:

  • Supports delivery of exceptional healthcare services by ensuring patient
  • Enhances the Trust’s ability to recover from cyber-attack through
  • Increases efficiency by cutting time taken to back up data from 50 local clinics by 75%