Published: 2 June 2015

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The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT) has partnered with Microsoft Consulting Services and information and records management experts Automated Intelligence (AI) to deliver a paper-light HR department.

Paul Duffy Co-Director for IT and Telecommunications for BHSCT comments,

“With over 22,000 staff providing health and social care services to the population of Belfast and wider regional services to Northern Ireland, the Trust is one of the largest healthcare providers in the UK. This has meant our HR department, providing a service to all of the Trust’s staff, has a large recurring number of requests for information.   All of the Trust’s HR records have been paper-based. Consequentially, the ever increasing number of records and their long mandatory record retention requirements has increased the cost, complexity and time consumed within the HR department.

We made the decision to go digital using the most cost-effective and compliant method.  Instead of deploying an additional system for Electronic Document and Records Management we have taken advantage of our existing collaboration platform Microsoft SharePoint.  We are using tools from AI to meet the information and records management needs for the project that provides a good and intuitive user experience. This project is an IT enabled business improvement process for the HR department, transforming how HR information is stored, accessed and managed. This has enabled a more effective and efficient HR business working model, delivering quality improvements in the provision of a health and social care service for our staff and ultimately our patients and clients ”

The Trust has partnered with Microsoft Consulting Services to deliver the project using software and services from both AI and document scanning specialists Service Point UK, part of the Paragon Group.

AI.COMPLIANCE EXTENDER, a solution from AI which adds information governance and business productivity capability has been selected to meet requirements of data access, data security and retention to improve usability, Data Protection and reduce litigation risks. In addition, another AI tool AI.SYNCPOINT is being deployed to integrate BHSCT’s email platform, Outlook to SharePoint, so that HR staff can access and manage the records securely from their email.  This ability for users to work in a familiar user interface is minimising the impact of change and maximising user adoption.

Service Point are scanning and indexing the paper records in preparation for them to be consumed through AI’s migration tool AI.DATAPOINT into the appropriate location in the new digital platform. Service Point is part of the Paragon Group, an international company offering business solutions in Document, Marketing, Access and Traceability.