Technology is transforming the healthcare industry
Technology is transforming the healthcare industry. It is now possible to provide a better experience to your patients and practitioners by modernising your healthcare environment with modern technology.
Widespread adoption of emerging technologies is changing the way medicine works; however, future-proofing hospitals remains a concern. Healthcare providers often face the challenge to cope with more patients, adapt to new technologies and provide smart facilities & services. To meet this concern, healthcare providers need modern systems. They require robust infrastructure solutions to improve efficiency & help the clinicians advance the quality of patient care. With HPE’s ultimate infrastructure solution, HPE Synergy, healthcare leaders can deliver a superior Virtual Client Compute experience that allows medical providers to enjoy higher availability of GPU intensive applications.
Healthcare providers can now access the ultimate flexibility to maintain a variety of workloads on a single platform, as well as scale to meet greater demand during seasons of increased usage. HPE Synergy has been thoroughly designed to compose and recompose assets in a matter of minutes—enabling new levels of speed and efficiency.
HPE Synergy provides a foundation of innovative security features that goes beyond perimeter protection—arming your systems to prevent, detect, and recover from threats. You can enjoy a seamless, consistent experience across devices, even as caregivers move to different rooms within a facility. With Synergy, we can virtualise the OEM applications and the delivery of the GPUs to the applications.
Coupled with HPE Pointnext services, Proactive care support provides both reactive and proactive service elements for your synergy devices and systems and helping you focus on your key priorities. Designed to help reduce problems from occurring and giving you a rapid response when they do occur. With HPE proactive care, you will get enhanced call experience with an assigned Technical Support Specialist who manages your case from start to finish and rapid access to technical experts to help resolve issues quickly. Proactive issue prevention with tailored reports for firmware/software revision management, proactive scan (health check), and incident trend reports. This will Free up IT teams from day to day maintenance and helps your team to protectively manage firmware/software revisions and other aspects of system health.
The Healthcare industry needs an infrastructure that is flexible enough to maintain a variety of workloads and scale with the seasons of increased usage. Moving to composable architecture can provide healthcare leaders with the ultimate flexibility to allocate a variety of workloads on a single platform and recompose those assets in minutes. Together with a streamlined management interface, healthcare providers can now also enjoy a greatly simplified management experience.
We’re passionate about delivering an outstanding customer experience and are trusted by some of the largest Public Sector organisations in the UK. With Government initiatives such as the NHS Infrastructure Maturity Model (NIMM) continuing to drive transformation across IT infrastructure, we align our knowledge and experience to deliver sustainable solutions which address the need for good governance.
As a long-term supplier to the NHS and an accredited supplier under the Crown Commercial Service, we recognise the potential to use technology to create efficiencies and improvements to patient care across all GP practices, CCGs, CSUs and local health economies. By combining our understanding of the NHS IT market, IT partner alliances and our national service and delivery model, we help organisations make the shift towards digitised healthcare.
Covid-19 – Partner Updates
Like all businesses, XMA are concerned about the recent Covid-19 outbreak.
After the announcement by the Prime minister on 12th March we are continuing to follow government advice closely and are primarily focused on ensuring the safety of our staff, customers and suppliers.
The company has a business continuity plan in the event of any significant disruption and will endeavour to keep as near to normal levels of service if a period of quarantine is imposed by the government. Clearly, if our warehouses are closed, this will be more disruptive. We will post updates regularly on our website as the situation alters.
We work with a number of technology partners as do our customers and have consolidated links to our partners Covid-19 messaging in one location. Many of them working to assist their customers where they can with their relevant technologies in areas such as “how-to” webinars, providing software at no or reduced cost – mainly around remote working as well as general updates on their business during this time.
Please see below links to our Vendor Partner updates:
If you have any questions or concerns around your Infrastructure, please get in touch with your XMA Account Manager or contact us on the form below.
To read our response to the COVID-19, please read here
Webinar: Preparing your school for remote teaching and learning
The COVID-19 crisis has startled us all.
We cannot plan for, or stop a crisis, but we can manage the outcomes in a considered and structured way. We have seen grand escalations in recent weeks from around the globe which has prepared us for the possibility of remote working; as mentioned in our live webinar, UK schools have been forced to close for an unknown amount of time.
What impact does this have on your school/college, your staff, and your students? What do you plan on doing to keep in the loop with your community?
Although it may feel like the situation is out of our hands and there is a lot going on, we still have complete control over what we choose to deliver to our communities and how we can progress with a smart strategy moving forward.
Media interference is powering through industries at a high rate, some with conflicting messages which can cause confusion and uncertainty, but we aim to guide you through this time of remote teaching and learning with our expertise in future-piercing technology and our positive perspective on how processes can continue, granted not as normal, but as a new experience…
Listen to our webinar around preparing schools for remote teaching and learning with XMA.
Discussion points:
Microsoft – Sumit Tank
How to create a live and on demand classroom environment
The vast array of services we offer to help in your digitized learning transformation
Solutions Architect – Tobias Stronge
The partnership process – a 4 level process when planning for remote teaching
Building a proactive model
Final words of…
Device distribution
Supply chain
Cloud technology
Using website to communicate with parents
Free productivity suite
Keep in the loop for more information and other webinars in our Education Series and be sure to follow us on Linkedin and Twitter for updates.
At this time when we are challenged, communication is key to keep morale and team spirit high. Technology allows us to communicate and remote teaching and learning provides a huge space of opportunity for us to explore new ways of delivering learning continuity. If we work together, we should be able to continue to communicate with those around us positively.
If you have any further questions then please do send them over in an email to schools@xma.co.uk or give us a call on 01727 201 820.
Let’s continue to discuss and share the great technology we know and love, with your teaching team and students. We will be here to support you.
Accessibility: The Dark Mode Rises
1 Minute Read (1MR)
The days of straining eyes, sensitive retinas and stretched out arms are over…
Hello Darkness, our new friend.
We are using our screens more now than ever (and multiple versions at once), whether it is on our desktop or mobile, we are engaging with hours and hours worth of scanning, typing, watching and re-reading, but what impact is this having on our spherical vision artists (commonly referred to as our eyes)?
Difficulty focusing, headaches, eye discomfort, blurred vision and insomnia caused by the suppression of the secretion of melatonin (the hormone needed for sleep) are all symptoms of overexposure to the clinical and strikingly bright white backgrounds that digitally lay before us.
Although we are aware of the ‘consequences’, we are a technology driven and obsessed circle – will we stop using our screens to protect our eyes? Most likely not. But what can we do to ease the strain and protect our lenses? Unless you would like to invest in a pair of yellow tinted spectacles, the next best thing for us is… dark mode.
In recent weeks, a modern redesign launched last week on Whatsapp with glare elimination – accommodating savvy users for those late night messages and addictive group chat contributions (extra effective with the orange tinge of night mode). Some users were automatically updated to this, although some users need to manually switch. If you haven’t had the chance to switch, try it out and see if it could work for you.
Why choose dark mode?
It is more relaxing for your eyes
Prolongs your devices battery life
It looks cool
How has Google Chrome modernised this trend of interface modification? And we ask, how often do you check out the available themes on Chrome?
Go to Settings > Appearance > Themes.
Here you will have the chance to change your browser settings to a vibe that suits yours. On the Chrome Web Store there is a large and heterogeneous collection of ultra modern layouts with sleek and stylish tabs and colours including: Dark and Black, Space Exploration, Minimalist, Enchanting Places, Superhero Sketches, Pink Party, and Doodle & Friends.
Take a look at the Green Spaces category preview below. Feeling refreshed? Mix it up and inspire.
Guide your eyes through the web with a touch of design…
How can Microsoft help with Covid-19?
We all know that technology is going to play a pivotal role in reducing the impact of COVID-19 on people and organisations, including helping them stay productive at work when they’re not able to be there in person. However, lots of businesses, as well as education and public sector organisations, are not geared to sudden mass home working.
For our customers at XMA I wanted to update you as to how you can work remotely without sacrificing collaboration, productivity or security.
Microsoft launched an interactive map that allows visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases of COVID-19 based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO); the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Whilst it is scary to see this data outlined on a heatmap, I’m pleased to report that this website is not the only way that Microsoft are supporting in the COVID-19 crisis.
JP Courtois [Microsoft’s executive vice president and president of Microsoft global sales, marketing and operations] announced that Microsoft are making their paid for collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams, free for six months to help organisations deal with the demand of end users needing to work from home.
The Teams trial is part of a new Office 365 trial for enterprises (Office 365 E1) which includes full meeting, collaboration and workflow capabilities.
Microsoft rolled out a new update on March 10 which lifted restrictions on how many users can be part of a team in the free version of Teams. The newly released features include being able to set up Office on personal devices such as phones and tablets; 1TB of cloud storage; enterprise video-sharing service; and being able host online video conferences.
For me the key obvious benefits of this are the online meetings, increased file storage and Office Suite on a personal device.
You will be able to host online meetings with audio, HD video, and web conferencing. Even being able to present ‘Broadcast meetings’ which will allow up to 10,000 people join with just a web browser. This can be done on almost any device – perfect for large, companywide, conferences or events.
With OneDrive for Business each user has 1 TB of personal cloud storage that can be accessed from anywhere, on any device. This means that you can securely save the documents that you work on at home and share with others inside and outside your organization, whilst being in control of who can see and edit each file. You could then sync these documents when you get back into your place of work with your local drives.
Installing the native Office suite of products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint will enable most workers to continue being productive especially if their own organisation can not afford to provide them with company owned hardware or the licences.
At XMA we were already regularly seeing the benefits of Teams but now with imposed travel reductions it is becoming a go to solution. Being well verse in the Microsoft Eco-structure internally as well as via our consultants, if you require any assistance on getting your trial setup, please let us know and we are of course happy to help.
In addition to this extended 6 month trial there are also specific ways that Azure AD can help enable remote access to work resources.
At XMA we want to help our customers in this time of need. So any support you require from your Account Manager, please let them know. For the more specific items I have covered here today, please feel free to reach out and contact me directly.
In summary stay safe, travel less, collaborate more.
Remote learning and teaching: is your school prepared?
In the light of recent developments with COVID-19, remote working within education is being ever-more apparent.
Schools around the world effected by the outbreak have sprung into action, quickly migrating their curriculum online and many more educational organisations will need to follow suit.
Since the outbreak of the virus in China, Microsoft Education partners have taken amazing action to ensure students can remain learning through this transition to remote education. As the UK is looking to take steps to contain this virus, many schools and universities are moving to remote working. The first UK University to do so being the London School of Economics who are due to move all teaching for undergraduate and postgraduate students online later this month, the first UK education facility to do so following the COVID-19 outbreak. (Telegraph)
So, in these unsettling times, how can you ensure that students don’t miss out on a crucial period of their education?
Microsoft for Education has a number of features that can bring the feel of a classroom into the home of a student.
Teams
As schools move to a remote learning environment, Teams can provide an online classroom that brings together virtual face-to-face connections, assignments, files, and conversations into a single platform accessible on a mobile device, tablet, PC, or browser.
Educators and staff have the ability to create their own class in Teams, add selected students, share lessons, create assignments, collaborate virtually in real-time, and do grading and provide personalized feedback all in one hub.
Here’s few tips on how to use Teams to its full advantage:
Have interactive discussions with your class by sharing your screen to present your lesson and encourage students to ask questions using the chat feature.
During a lesson, you can moderate the class discussion by muting students, making them presenters, or if needed, removing them from the meeting. Finally, record the lesson so students can review it on their own time.
Record a class session in case some students can’t join during the live session.
For assessments, you can easily create and grade quizzes in Teams using Microsoft Forms.
Create a Fun Channel. Have a virtual science fair or poetry reading group. This will go a long way with students of all ages.
Make sure your teaching staff are prepared for remote teaching
XMA want to help support educators with practical guides, professional development, and how-to information that will help empower them and their students to stay motivated and engaged with learning, no matter where the classroom environment may be. Microsoft have created a series of webinars that can be accessed on-demand for educators to get started on Teams, and resources in our Microsoft Educator Center to help new and existing users get up and running.
Help students stay engaged
Here are some tips from educators who have helped create healthy and effective learning environments that allow students to thrive in this new virtual setting.
Stay healthy and charged: Learning from home can be a new experience for students. Encourage them to take breaks between lessons to stretch, hydrate, or just unplug.
Stay focused: Find a quiet place where they can focus on the lesson with minimal distractions.
Stay connected: School is important from a social perspective. Not seeing their friends face-to-face every day can be hard for students. Help them adjust to this new reality by encouraging them to schedule a lunch session for classmates to stay connected. If they are out sick or can’t join class because of an appointment, remind them to change their status or set a status message so their classmates are also aware.
Motivate your class: Use Teams to encourage joyful challenges throughout the week by creating a Fun Activities channel. For example, hold a cooking contest and have students share their creations in the channel. Recognize your students by sending them Praise in the channel, inspiring more students to participate.
Bring lessons to life: Make a lesson interactive by enabling Whiteboard in Teams during a live lesson. Have students come up to the whiteboard and solve a math problem or demonstrate their art skills, just like they would in a physical classroom.
Connect with students individually: It can be difficult to gauge how students are faring without seeing them in person, so connecting individually is very important. You can support students 1:1 in a chat, creating a safe space for students to ask their questions and get the extra help they need.
Credit: Helping teachers and students make the switch to remote learning | Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365 | https://bit.ly/2TKs0Lf
Innovate with an intelligent foundation
Modern technology is at the core of good government, helping to create the vital services that citizens and local businesses need to thrive. While good progress has been made, the Public Sector must now deliver transformational change. This means navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution and modernising IT.
In the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be critical to modern government. This for fraud detection, ID verification, cyber-security, as well as to enable smart places. And to support early intervention and prevention strategies.
AI THAT IMPROVES LIVES
But knowing where to start on your AI journey isn’t easy, particularly given the security, ethical and interoperability challenges that need working through. But expert advice is on tap from HPE.
Machine learning and AI can be used to improve human lives. It is already doing this whether it is through devices that offer advice, like the intelligent personal assistants that most everyone uses to prepare us for changes in the weather, or with systems that protect our money from criminals, or devices that offer medical advice from the comfort of our own home. This is only the start; the potential of AI is undeniable.
AUTOMATE & FREE VALUABLE HUMAN RESOURCE
Using advanced algorithmic techniques such as ‘deep learning’, AI has the potential to solve complex problems fast, and in so doing, free up time and raise productivity
With IT environments growing more and more complex and demanding, traditional IT systems management is moving into a new era of intelligence-driven automation and optimisation. The #FutureFit trend is to autonomous computing, where new technologies adjust compute, storage, and network capacity on the fly in a continuous optimisation model.
New machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, combined with a common management framework, are changing the face of how IT operations are bringing all the pieces together―with automation being key.
FASTER SERVICE DELIVERY
The foundation begins with automation because if you can automate, you become repeatable, consistent, and reliable – vital in data centres. Automation also drives greater consistency and quality of data which can be used to understand service trends, performance and personalised citizen needs to help improve operations, enable faster delivery and smarter transformation.
HPE has years of delivery expertise on global projects across multiple technologies and AI workloads and has the expert advisors you need to take your project to hero status.
This year-end, HPE invites you to invest in high-performance infrastructure to drive innovation, security, agility and transformation with people-centred outcomes.
TRANSFORMATION ENABLED
An AI-enabled technology foundation can help the public sector create new value and experiences for humans and businesses in a digital age, one where almost everyone and everything generates and shares data. And achieve transformation.
In a world where every investment government makes in technology must work harder, the solution for a #futurefit government is an intelligent foundation.
HPE GEN10 TECHNOLOGY
HPE ProLiant — The intelligent compute foundation for hybrid cloud that delivers unmatched workload optimisation, security, and automation, all available as a service.
HPE ProLiant servers feature user-inspired innovations to make IT simpler, including:
Have you realised the benefit of asset lifecycle management for your business?
Let’s rewind back to the late 70s when the slogan ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ was estimated to have been introduced into society…
Where efforts to reduce waste were in great favour due to the mass realisation of the aftermath of World War 2, spiralling from the open access and freedom of buying which consequently led to an increase in consumer goods, single use items and unsustainable disposal.
In the 2000s, we were presented with the concept of the ‘Three R’s’ in leaflets and public articles, with a large push over television ad space; flashforward to 2020 and the green triangle that we all recognise to represent these pillars has been a valuable addition to the emoji keyboard for years ♻️
But how can we relate this to technology and devices? What does this mean for your business? And how could it influence your buying and renewals?
Below are some key points to consider from Andy Wright, our Commercial Director here at XMA.
How do you redeploy your assets and get a longer life out of them?
If there are assets that are no longer suitable for your business, what would you do with them?
Would you look at purchasing pre-owned goods?
Recycling old technology into new areas is a trend that we hope will mushroom throughout the IT industry, from an economic and environmental perspective.
Take a look at this video from FDE TV and see what is currently being done by XMA and HPE to see the wheels spinning.
As a tech-savvy society, we are consuming more at a faster rate, whether this is due to innovation, relying on new styles to stay current and on trend, the desire for collection, or anything else in between… Saying this, we are also more aware of the asset lifecycle and how older assets can be refreshed and transformed, being fully fit for purpose for brand new projects.
Our Platinum Partnership with HPE is truly valued, progressive and productive and as mentioned in the video, we are ‘showing how it really should be done’, so all aboard, and welcome to simple and sustainable procurement.
HP for Education: How are schools maximising their IT budget?
Conventionally, the UK has always been a frontrunnerin the adoption of technology in schools.In the UK, schools spend close to £900 million on technology a year(Blundell, 2019).
It is a common theme in UK schools – there is less budget with further to stretch. With schools regularly feeling the squeeze in education funding, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to do more, with less.
The importance of technology has become increasingly recognised, with pupils exposed to IT for over half of total teaching time (Blundell, 2019). IT is a vital part of school education and it is relied upon both in classroom technology, teaching methods and for homework, administration, staff communication, reporting etc. It is important to assure as a school, you have the most up-to-date IT strategy in place, our account managers at XMA are here to provide guidance and advice to put the most effective plan in place.
There is an ever-increasing standard of technology expected within education to assure students are maximising their school day and achieving as much as possible. Therefore, in order to maintain the expected standards, school’s IT budgets must be able to stretch further. This mounting pressure has led to schools turning to alternative methods in order to stretch their budget.
HP and XMA have been engaging with schools on these issues for many years. We understand these pressures and the fact budgets must be spent on much more then just HP hardware.Therefore, HP for Education helps maximise these budgets. HP in Education supports the purchase of additional software, training and services required to allow HP and XMA to provide successful solutions.
HP and XMA are equipping schools with powerful technology to be used for creation, collaboration, training and development to support both students and teachers.
HP for Education includes:
Tech Fund: The opportunity to win your school £25,000
Marketplace: Spend rewards on software and services
Proof of concept: Trial solutions before purchase
Trade in: Earn £200 per old device
How does this allow my school to save?
HP in Educations innovative trade-in scheme allows your education organisation to receive funds in exchange for trading in any equipment (subject to conditions) when you purchase a qualifying HP device.
XMA and HP are transforming the learning experience. As life, work and technology lines are blurred and ever-adapting, schools must adapt to keep up, to ensure their students can be prepared for their next steps and thrive in our digital society.
Contact us to find out more about the HP in Education program and how we can assist you in making the most out of your budgets, whilst putting the most effective plan in place.
Coronavirus: Creating obstacles into IT supply chains.
1 Minute Read (1MR)
News Update.
Coronavirus: UK declares ‘serious and imminent threat’ to public health.
At the forefront of our news channels, Coronavirus is spreading at superspeed and this is only predicted to continue. Our heartfelt thoughts are with all those affected and our deepest condolences go out to those who have lost their friends and families to this tragic outbreak.
Whilst this is a desperate time of emotional strain, Coronavirus has created an unstoppable force of disruption into IT supply chains. In recent times, issues have been compounded by a global shortage of Intel CPUs and Coronavirus is quickly adding to these demands and forming harsher barriers for production.
The 25th of January marked the start of the Chinese New Year, usually a time of celebration, but this year it was somewhat pulled to a place of despair as Coronavirus was attacking civilians at a violent rate, consequently generating a knock-on impact to the performance of IT factories. Following on from this, as a result, China is in semi-lockdown, reflecting a domino pattern where employees cannot enter the factories to manufacture stage 1 parts, therefore the production of complete devices has come to almost a standstill (on top of the silicon shortages mentioned above) overall hindering the usual supply chain of products.
Some factories are beginning to open again, although some still do remain closed. Where possible, we are leveraging stock from the UK and our own warehouses. XMA will continue to closely monitor this situation and engage with people locally and with our vendor partners.
What does this mean for you?
Delays in manufacturing and shipping
Set back orders
Later delivery times
Our Advice
Order earlier than you would to keep your projects on time.
Have a chat with us about alternative products and solutions.
If you have any questions or concerns, or queries about your orders or the ordering process, please do get in contact in a way that suits you.
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