Zafar Chaudry: one CIO, two trusts

Zafar Chaudry may be in a unique position. The trained doctor oversees IT operations at both Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust and nearby Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust. Alder Hey, with 2,800 employees, is about to undergo a big "rip and replace" IT project to ensure standardisation across both trusts, a project Chaudry says he is not nervous about. "I can't be nervous. If I'm nervous that means all my staff will be nervous!" He has ambitiously set a target of six months to complete a job he admits "should take more than 12". "I try not think years ahead of time, usually six months is a good target date to deliver some big project," he says. His aim is to bring Alder Hey up to the same standard as the more technologically advanced Liverpool Women's. He does not believe the task will be easy. "In Liverpool Women's people are more forward thinking because they've had a lot of exposure to IT. Over the last five years we've spent a lot of money. At Alder Hey Children's they're lagging behind, but when you go and talk to clinical staff they're ready to bite your hand off because they've heard you're about to put an investment into technology," says Chaudry, who took the dual role in September 2009. The standardisation project will include new desktop computers and the implementation of an automation tool from Kaseya at Alder Hey in the coming weeks. The tool has been live at Liverpool Women's for 18 months and the hospital hopes to see similar benefits at Alder Hey, minus a few teething problems. Liverpool Women's originally installed the tool on a virtual platform before realising the software only runs on a physical server, but since a reinstallation there have been no further issues. "We're now able to support desktops primarily remotely and so first time fixes happen almost instantaneously. We've reduced our text support time from three to four days down to less than 24 hours. We're also able to fully audit everything that's connected to the network," Chaudry explains. Two for one offer Before taking on the dual role last year, Chaudry was CIO of Liverpool Women's for five years. His current role arose when the chief executive of Alder Hey suggested sharing IT services to reduce costs. The CIO admits that, although it is cost effective, it is tough dividing his time between two sites whilst trying to deal with staff's IT problems. He recalls a recent incident involving him sitting next to a medical secretary and discovering to his horror that her computer was "ancient". "I said to her 'are you happy with that PC?' and she said 'no it's slow and doesn't let me do what I need to do.'" Chaudry told her that the only reason she was stuck with an old machine was because he was unaware of her predicament, not because they didn't have them in stock. She told him that he should probably talk to other secretaries on her floor because a number of them had the same problem. He says face-to-face communication like this is key, as quite often staff do not have the time to approach him but are happy to talk technology when he "walks the floors". Chaudry sees change management as another big challenge. He compares implementing new technology to a public relations process and says you have to "sell the products" to staff. Chaudry believes being clinically trained helps, as it gives him credibility and the ability to emphasise. He adds: "What we've got to do is make sure that whatever innovation we bring into the organisation, it wins the hearts and minds of the stakeholders that are going to use the technology." Both hospitals use Meditech healthcare information systems instead of the National Programme for IT approved Lorenzo suite from iSoft, and Chaudry says they are likely to be one of the last adopters of the latter. "What I've been saying is basically we need to use Lorenzo only when it has the full functionalities that we've got now, because both trusts are foundation trusts," with the measure of independence that status provides. "We need to be able to support the business because that's why we have technology in the first place. So we're not going to go and take a product that isn't yet fully installed anywhere," he adds. Otherwise, once the standardisation project is complete the hospitals also plan to test a possible operating system migration from Microsoft Windows XP to Windows 7. The CIO says that he will play a key role in the trial. "I'm usually the test bed as I tend to break everything," Chaudry says. "They always give me the first machine of everything. I am going to get the first Windows 7 machine on the network configured the way I want it to, field test it for at least 90 days and tell them what the glitches are in their build."