Fujifilm UK Medical Systems is part of the Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo. They operate in diverse sectors such as photography, optics, office and medical electronics, biotechnology and chemicals and encompass more than 300 subsidiaries under the Fujifilm Group umbrella. Fujifilm’s commitment to continuously creating innovative technologies, products and services is reflected through their corporate slogan ‘Value from Innovation’ and they seek to combine their own original technology with expertise and technology from other organisations to enable them to develop new solutions which address the needs of their global customers.
Fujifilm Medical supply a range of radiology and pathology software systems which are used within NHS hospitals, private healthcare, and veterinary practices across the UK.
Fujifilm already had a great many NHS customers, mainly within the radiology area but more recently they were developing business in the pathology area, which was an area which wanted to make faster progress towards digitisation.
They wanted to solve a challenge for all their healthcare customers and add value to their software solutions by supporting customers with network connectivity to the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) and other cloud services.
To set up an additional network link required additional time and resource from stretched NHS IT teams and so Fujifilm wanted to provide connectivity as a value-add for its software solutions. This would provide both a service innovation to its NHS customers as well as solve a challenge for its customers.
Fujifilm wanted network connectivity to HSCN for separate NHS Trusts, specifically:
With the move to remote working, Fujifilm needed a secure route for users to access the network which would ensure encryption from laptop to the Redcentric network.
The NHS digital strategy and their Digital First approach meant that their NHS customers were moving to offsite public or private data centres for hosting. Fujifilm therefore wanted connectivity between AWS and the Redcentric network and specifically:
Redcentric is a name we can trust and a name that our NHS customers will trust. You bring in a great service and a great team behind that as well.
Matt Otto, Cloud and Collaboration Manager at Fujifilm commented, ‘Redcentric is a trusted name for HSCN connectivity, and we knew that from our conversations with our NHS customers that a lot of trusts in the UK choose to use Redcentric as they are one of the largest and most widely used provider in the UK. Redcentric is a name we can trust and a name that our NHS customers will trust. You bring in a great service and a great team behind that as well.’
‘For our service team, having that HSCN connection is key to supporting our customers.’ He added, ‘With any network provider, there will be slight hiccups, things do break, but when things have broken Redcentric are always very communicative and really support us in bringing our services back online for our customers.’
Remote workers were given VPN access so that they could access software and systems securely while working from home.
“That willingness to share knowledge is what really makes a difference to us and what stands out for me when working with Redcentric.”
Matt explained, ‘We have a close relationship with the Redcentric Account Manager which is key for us to be able to propose and deliver new solutions to our customers, but it’s the technical people who are the kind of people I really want to be talking to, to understand how they have approached the technical side of things.’
‘The key thing for us this year is having the AWS connection’. He added, when it came to supporting Fujifilm with setting up the connection to AWS, Redcentric guided them through the process of contracting with Redcentric and directly with AWS to provide a highly available, resilient service, that consisted of resiliently provisioned private circuits into AWS, resilient Redcentric managed firewalls and resilient access into the HSCN network.
‘For example, I had a call with your Solution Architect and engaged AWS aswell, and it turned out that the two people on that call were the same two people who had worked on the original solution design to meet the obligations for customers specified by NHS Digital around the interaction between Redcentric and AWS. So, it was good to know that the same people are still working in those organisations and to know we have their validation of our solution design and know that they have that understanding. It gave us confidence.’
‘The good thing about dealing with Redcentric is that the Solution Architect gave us some good guidance on what to do when choosing the right softnets, and shared advice about what to do first to avoid some of the challenges, so we wouldn’t have to go back in the future and address those known issues.
Redcentric is a trusted name for HSCN connectivity, and we knew that from our conversations with our NHS customers that a lot of trusts in the UK choose to use Redcentric as they are one of the largest and most widely used provider in the UK.
The partnership with Redcentric means Fujifilm can benefit from the expertise of a trusted partner which is recognised across the NHS, and which gives their NHS customers confidence.
Redcentric is supporting Fujifilm to pursue their strategy of bringing innovative new services to market which benefit their NHS customers.
Fujifilm benefits from the depth of knowledge that Redcentric has around AWS, and their close relationship with the AWS team to enable the best solution possible to be designed to meet Fujifilm needs.
“There are certain suppliers who really want to help you and others who just want to tick the box. Redcentric are definitely on the side of being helpful and want to go above and beyond to help their customers.”
