The challenge
The pandemic left millions of people without the means to access the healthcare they needed. Our NHS needed to find a way to bridge that gap.
Telemedicine took centre stage in 2020, when it became the best way to connect patients with doctors through lockdown.
But many GP surgeries in the UK barely had strong enough connectivity to meet their day-to-day needs, let alone handle video conferencing and virtual appointment systems.
Plus, with people shielding and reducing travel, opt-in services like blood donations and breast screenings saw a dangerous decline in participants—so the NHS needed a way to keep those services going.
With the pandemic ramping up and patients waiting for care, this all had to happen as fast as possible.
The solution
Superfast 4G for data-hungry telemedicine solutions, with rugged devices for road-safe mobile connectivity.
On the day of the order we sent our network engineer across the country to install new data centre interconnects, so our partner could access our connectivity locally.
Then, we built a secure and compliant 4G mobile broadband solution giving GP surgeries the high data rates they needed for telemedicine, and used our Instanet to get them online right away. We bundled in flexible data rates to protect against overages, since nobody knew how long the pandemic would last.
Lastly, we combined high gain antennas with rugged 4G routers to create a road-safe mobile solution. The NHS used this to connect mobile breast screening and blood donation vans, taking these services straight to patients’ doors. All secured with private static IPs to keep patient data safe.
The result
We helped 2000 GP surgeries connect with their patients and deliver critical care at a time when it was most needed, while also enabling breast screenings and blood donations to continue through the pandemic.
Meanwhile, our partner won £1.1m through the deal and gained the government’s trust, leading to more projects down the line.
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