Tags: Documentum

Full Steam Ahead With The G-Cloud!

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As we now know, if you’re a public sector ICT buyer you are now expected to look at the G-Cloud – the rapidly-expanding catalogue of useful, cost-effective ICT goods and services – as your first port of call for any new systems you are thinking of purchasing .

I’ve recently discussed  our work in G-Cloud with our exciting project with QinetiQ to build a great new reservoir management system for the Environment Agency . But, I’d like to discuss another side of this key topic – what specifically we are offering that public sector ICT buyer through the programme.

In June this year we are very proud to be able to announce we had been awarded G-Cloud iii supplier status in the ‘CloudStore’s’ Infrastructure and Software as a Service categories, as well in the Specialist Cloud. Specifically, we are now listed for our document capture, document management and case management solutions there, in partnership with secure cloud infrastructure specialist Skyscape.

This is in addition to other Cloud services we can offer public sector customers, such as Cloud-based content backup or our extensive range of consultancy, implementation and support services.

The core of our offering is our EMC Documentum-based enterprise content and document management platform, SynApps Documentum Document Management in the Cloud. As a leading EMC partner, we implement and add lots of value to this top tier business suite.

Another G-Cloud solution is our Intelligent Document Capture in the Cloud product. This helps public sector customers capture all their key paper-based documents using a wide variety of scanners and multi-function peripherals, index and store them in a secure cloud-based repository. That turns them into a resource which is then much more easily accessible, online, in a controlled, secure environment. That’s based not on Documentum, but another great EMC product, its Captiva line.

SynApps is also providing innovative case management solutions in the shape of our Case Management in the Cloud offering, based on EMC’s xCP case management technologies; that offers the basis for a range of specialist case-based applications, such as Investigative Case Management in the Cloud, a piece of technology that lets the Police efficiently register and view the status of a crime online, and which allows all case-related documentation can be stored securely.

‘Securely’ is a very important concept in public sector ICT, of course. Indeed, fear that Cloud is less than convincing in this regard has been holding too many organisations back in this area. The great news is that the government has worked out a way to dispel this concern. Earlier, I mentioned our link with Skyscape. What that means in practical terms is that all our G-Cloud solutions will be hosted in highly resilient UK data centres via our partner’s Cloud Service infrastructure, which is officially certified to support all levels of data from Impact Level 0 (IL0) to Impact Level 3 (IL3).

As Skyscape has no less a set of clients than the MoD and HMRC, I think we can take that as a sign of its expertise in safety and privacy in the Cloud.

I know that some sceptics say that the G-Cloud programme is all talk and no big projects yet, but that’s wrong; it’s moving a head at a tremendous pace.

And from where we sit, our work in the G-Cloud is going tremendously well – and that real savings and benefits to the public are starting to be realised as a result.

This is one to mark up as a real success for Britain, we believe; do you agree?

 

Our Precious National Reservoir Resource Being Managed Through The Cloud

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We recently talked about the importance of G-Cloud (‘G-Cloud Matters To All Of Us’), the government’s targeted push to radically simplify and cheapen the provisioning of ICT for the public sector. And I am delighted to be able to discuss a specific example of this kind of straightforward, value for money contracting that we have been a part of.

We have just been signed up to provide the back end technology for a new system the Environment Agency   is deploying to better manage English reservoirs – a vital national resource, especially in this era of strange weather we are having.

The application’s based on the proven Documentum enterprise content management system, as extended by SynApps – and in fact, what’s exciting is that the project is the first ever cross-Whitehall accredited implementation of that platform. We are working with our strategic partner QinetiQ on the security side of all this.

Not only did the the Environment Agency purchase the solution through the G-Cloud procurement framework, it also will be delivered through the Cloud. And another notable feature, the project will be bedded in to the Agency’s environment using the government-backed Agile project management approach.

Civil servants using the software tell us it’s not only going to help significantly improve admin and management of the reservoirs – it will also be able to offer much better service to the public, as information can at last be centralised and routed around much better.

We are 100% committed to ensuring the benefits of Agile, Cloud and the G-Cloud buying process get realised with this project. That means our investment as taxpayers will get properly looked after in government ICT.

That’s got to be a very promising start to our work in the G-Cloud? We’ll be bringing you updates on progress – probably around the end of the year, when we expect the first phase to be fully live.

 

 

Welcome To ‘Connected Content’: Glue To Help You Work Better

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If you spend any time with us at SynApps, before very long we’re going to start talking about a trend we believe is highly important, ‘connected content.’ So I will spend a minute or two trying to articulate just what that is – and why we are so passionate about it.

There’s lots of words around ‘connection’ in the industry, and if you think of the name SynApps – as in, that wonderful chip in the brain we have millions of, your synapse – we are talking about connections, about connecting brain cells. 

Beyond that, we find that for every single project we get involved in we have to implement some form of integration between the content management system and several line-of-business applications.  These could be SAP Accounts Payable, some form of HR or other point systems such as a claims management system or an insurance package. 

Because we integrate so often, we ended up ‘productising’ the process so as to make that back end business platform linkage happen as quickly as possible; hence our range of connection products, the ConXApps family. What they do is content-enable the major line-of-business applications, e.g. SAP, Oracle eBusiness, plus the leading desktop productivity tools such as the Microsoft Office suite with leading Enterprise Content Management solutions, including Alfresco, Microsoft SharePoint and EMC’s Documentum.

Why this is useful is because instead of a three month project, we can integrate your corporate EDRM with an accounts payable system in a very short space of time by extracting the connection from the core business application to the central document and records repository – so that instead of having to do it differently every time, we do it in a common way.

Connecting up your content like this will not only save you lots of time and resource, it will make you more efficient.

That’s why we’re so excited about it.

SynApps Enterprise Content Management Solutions Listed on G-Cloud III, Paving the Way for Dynamic Document, Records and Case Management across the Public Sector

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Through a strategic alliance with secure cloud infrastructure provider Skyscape, SynApps is bringing cloud-based business solutions based around digital content capture, document and case management, to UK government organisations and public services

Maidenhead, UK – June 10th , 2013 – SynApps Solutions, the content management solutions company, has announced its acceptance onto the latest iteration of the UK Government’s G-Cloud cloud services procurement framework. This makes it easy for the public sector to peruse and buy approved cloud-based technology and application services.

SynApps, which has a strong track record for delivering secure, hosted and cloud-based content management services to the public sector, has been awarded G-Cloud III supplier status for a wide range of IaaS, SaaS and Specialist Cloud Services under Lots 1, 3 and 4. SynApps offers three families of cloud-based business solutions under the GCloud III framework – document capture, document management and case management – in partnership with secure cloud infrastructure specialist Skyscape. This is in addition to a series of basic services such as cloud-based content backup, and a full range of consultancy, implementation and support services that are packaged and priced separately.

SynApps provides cloud services using the market-leading Documentum EDM/EDRM platform from EMC, in the form of SynApps Documentum Document Management in the Cloud. SynApps, a leading EMC partner, implements and adds value to the full EMC enterprise content management product suite.

Another G-Cloud III offering is SynApps Intelligent Document Capture in the Cloud. This enables users to capture key paper-based documents using a wide variety of scanners and multi-function peripherals, index and store them in a secure cloud-based repository. These documents are then accessible online in a controlled, secure environment. The Intelligent Document Capture service is based on EMC’s industry-leading Captiva product suite.

SynApps is also providing innovative case management solutions via the cloud. The core solution, SynApps Case Management in the Cloud, is based on EMC’s xCP case management technologies and provides the foundation for a range of specialist case-based applications. These include SynApps Investigative Case Management in the Cloud; enabling police forces to register and view the status of a crime online, where all case-related documentation can be stored securely.

SynApps is a leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions and associated consultancy, implementation and support services. As well as on-premise systems, SynApps provides cloud-based ECM solutions to customers ranging from Hampshire Constabulary to organisations in the life sciences industry.

Thanks to SynApps’ strategic partnership with Skyscape, its G-Cloud solutions will be hosted in highly resilient UK data centres. Skyscape’s Cloud Service infrastructure is certified to support all levels of data sensitivity through the G-Cloud programme, from Impact Level 0 (IL0) to Impact Level 3 (IL3). Skyscape has been a G-Cloud provider since its first iteration in February 2012 and counts the Ministry of Defence and HMRC among its clients.

Phil Dawson, CEO of Skyscape, said “Skyscape is very proud to be working with SynApps, and that SynApps has chosen to sell Skyscape’s highly-secure, resilient and agile services through G-iii, many of which have Pan Government Accreditation (PGA) to IL 3 and IL 2.  We fully expect G-iii to be an exciting, highly-competitive and rapidly maturing market, presenting opportunities for buyers and vendors alike”

Previously, SynApps had submitted a single application for inclusion on G-Cloud II – a cloud-service based document management platform and, in a short space of time, it has seen an ever-growing demand for such services. Commenting on the potential of G-Cloud, Jim Whitelaw, Managing Director of SynApps, said, “We have found it to be a powerful vehicle for bringing high-quality solutions to the public sector in the shortest possible time and at best value. Given that enterprise content management is our sole focus, we believe SynApps can add enormous value to the public sector through our cloud services, accelerating organisations’ speed to market with dynamic content-sharing applications based on a choice of market-leading platforms.”

Extending Your X-Ray Database Is The Better Way To Get To Electronic Patient Records

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We all know that ‘the Holy Grail’ in healthcare is when we get to a point where patient services can be provided seamlessly and with continuity across any combination of service providers – from acute and mental health Trusts to community GP practices, pop-up clinics and even via the caregiver in the field.

SynApps VNA Implementation Plays Central Role in Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust’s Electronic Patient Record Strategy

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The open standards-based vendor-neutral archive, which is about to go live, will store digital medical images and other electronic patient notes so that these can be accessed from anywhere and shared remotely in a fraction of the time taken previously. The Trust will also share the VNA facility with other Trusts and healthcare providers who are running out of time to implement a VNA

Maidenhead, UK – April 15th 2013 – In the next few weeks, the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust will go live with a full-blown vendor-neutral archive solution from SynApps Solutions, the content management solutions company. Ultimately this will give the Trust’s clinicians – and external healthcare partners – instantaneous access to patients’ medical images and associated case notes at the point of need.

The Trust is one of the largest and busiest in the North of England, with an annual budget of over £400 million. Although the original trigger for implementing a VNA was the need to replace a proprietary picture archiving and communication system (PACS), following the breakup of the NHS Connecting for Health IT programme, the Royal’s plans for the technology go much wider.

James Norman, CIO at the Trust, explains: “We decided on a truly open platform so we could go beyond the scope of PACS and store and manage other content alongside medical images. To maximise the benefits, we decided to integrate our VNA plans with our electronic document and records management strategy, using the same infrastructure.”

The Trust selected SynApps for the VNA implementation based on the company’s experience and its status as an EMC-preferred VNA implementation partner. Its wider ambitions are linked to a new state-of-the-art hospital it plans to build. Before it moves into the new premises in 2017, the Trust wants to be ‘paperlight’ in the way it captures and manages patient records and other content.

The EMC VNA solution from SynApps, which is based on the leading Documentum Enterprise Content Management platform, is crucial to this strategy. Says Mr Norman, “We needed a future-proof solution that uses standards-based formats so that the content can be accessed by new systems as they come along, as well as those used by partner organisations.”

The Royal also plans to open up its VNA facility for other Trusts to use, as a cloud-based service. “We are one of the larger Trusts in the country and not everyone is at the same point in their journey towards implementing a VNA,” he explains. “With the SynApps solution, we have the ability to scale the system right out and help other Trusts looking for a VNA solution as a service for their medical content.”

More than 80 million of the Royal’s medical images have been migrated across to the new VNA to date, where they are stored as intelligent DICOM digital files. Once in the VNA, clinicians will be able to call up images from any location, on any device, in a fraction of the time taken previously.

“This means medical staff will have more time to answer patient questions, and explain a diagnosis and related treatment plans, improving the quality of care,” Mr Norman concludes. “It will also mean they can see more patients.”

About the Trust

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and busiest hospital trusts in the North of England, with an annual budget exceeding £400 million. It delivers services across two sites and three hospitals, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Broadgreen Hospital and Liverpool University Dental Hospital, and employs more than 5,500 people.

Each year the Trust sees more than half a million people in its outpatient department and deals with around 150,000 emergency patients and day case admissions. It is one of the top teaching trusts in the UK with well-established links to the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and international institutions. In 2013 work will begin on a new £425 million state of the art Royal Liverpool University Hospital.  To find out more about the Trust, visit www.rlbuht.nhs.uk .