It’s Winter Break and I’m sitting here, working remotely from a ski lodge in Lake Tahoe, California while my kids race down the slopes. The wonder of the fact that I can work this way isn’t lost on me; I’m reminded first-hand of Citrix’ ability to truly enable working from anywhere, anytime, as I sit here working no differently than I would from my office, all while my kids schuss and slalom in the snow. And I’m not the only one.

Given that it’s a super-busy day in the lodge, my table – it seats four with only my single chair in use – has become a rotating landing spot for skiers needing a spot to rest in between runs and to down a quick snack. As a result, I’ve had lots of interesting conversations today with people from all over the world. My favorite was with June, a gray-haired British woman who sat down to rest her back after a day of skiing; we chatted a bit while she sipped her tea.

As soon as I mentioned that I work for Citrix, her face lit up! She enthusiastically declared her love for Citrix, as our technology had allowed her to create her own work situation in which she works remotely every day from her flat in a London suburb. For her, this was an amazing positive change in her life and also an enormous change from the way people worked in the first days of her career 40 years ago.

When I mentioned that I was, at that very moment, writing a news release for a UK customer of ours — Bolton NHS Foundation Trust — she looked further aghast, saying they were one of her main clients! It turns out that Citrix not only helps her work from home, but helps her clients — the clinicians and staff at the Trust. Here we are, having a chance meeting, thousands of miles from her home, sitting in a tiny ski lodge on a random Tuesday, finding a connection, all thanks to the ubiquitous nature of using Citrix solutions. It’s the kind of story I’m pleased to say I hear time and again when I mention that I work for Citrix.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, in Greater Manchester, provides national health service (NHS) for people in 30 locations.

NHS Trusts, such as Bolton, have been under immense pressure to innovate while also reducing costs and improving patient care. In addition, the Trust’s clinicians tend to work around the clock from a variety of locations. As the Trust didn’t have a mobility solution, staff were not able to access hospital data when working in community clinics or if working remotely. If specialists were not available on site, critical diagnoses and patient care decisions were often delayed.

Brett Walmsley, the CTO of Bolton NHS Trust, aimed to address these needs by giving clinicians and support staff access to data and applications from anywhere. The results have allowed staff to give crucial information and results more quickly, for example:

  • Within the hospital, clinicians are now able to retrieve their information where they left off using any thin-client terminal on premises.
  • With access to the same desktop they use in the hospital now on a personal PC, tablet or smartphone, clinicians also improved services in the community with clinics in local healthcare centres.
  • Clinicians can load patient records or an x-ray image at any terminal and access those same records from another screen in a consulting room or from their personal tablet or PC at home.
  • Staff can respond more immediately since log-on times have been reduced to just two to three seconds.

Right away, ringing endorsements for Citrix came in from the trust’s top staff, including Dr. Simon Irving, a consultant acute physician at the trust, who shared:

“The new virtual desktop has made life so much easier as a consultant working in acute medicine. All applications run much, much quicker and I can quickly log in to the terminal closest to the patient I am treating. Then there’s the teaching aspect. I can work on a presentation in my office, walk to the seminar room, tap to login and there’s my presentation ready to go. No messing with pen drives, email or anything else. Another obvious gain is from a data security point of view. People used to leave their sessions ‘open’ as logging in and out took too long to be efficient in an acute medical environment. Now, the ease of logging in and out of personal desktops discourages staff from leaving their sessions active. All in all, the new desktops have made life simpler and more efficient in the wards.” 

Hearing this positive feedback from clinicians is exactly what Walmsley was hoping for when he chose Citrix. With a small staff of only 21 people, Walmsley aimed to save time and money by simplifying IT management from the service desk to the data center:

We wanted to give staff a consistent user experience wherever they were: in the hospital, in community clinics or providing care in patient’s homes. This is not just about technology as an enabler. It’s not just about putting in faster machines. The Citrix virtual desktop has changed the way clinicians work. 

And, indeed, it has not only changed work for the clinicians, but also for the patients and those touching their lives, as supporting consultants and staff like my new friend, June.

The Trust’s use of Citrix solutions exemplifies how Citrix is meeting the needs of the future of work by delivering the industry’s most comprehensive and integrated solutions. And the widespread knowledge of the value of Citrix when I talk to people anywhere in the world is further proof that Citrix is leading the future of digital transformation.

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