Microsoft Teams wins fast approval – 40,000 users enabled in one week
South Australia Health amps up clinical communications
Microsoft News Center
South Australia Health has deployed Microsoft Teams to over 40,000 personnel in one week – all eager for a secure anytime, anywhere tool to communicate and collaborate with one another as they respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
SA Health declared a health emergency in response to COVID-19 in mid-March, it also established a series of specialist clinics and testing centres and encouraged employees to work from home if at all possible.
In order to facilitate communications – particularly among clinical teams – while maintaining appropriate social distancing SA Health has made Teams available to all personnel.
Leveraging the SA Government’s Office 365 central tenancy, SA Health was able to offer employees the opportunity to use Teams on their own devices to ensure that they could keep in contact with one another and collaborate on work tasks.
Teams is being rolled out as part of the standard operating environment for SA Health desktops and laptops, with users now offered the option to roll out on Android or iOS devices as well.
The deployment has been achieved through a partnership between SA Health, Microsoft and SA’s Office for ICT and Digital Government.
According to Bret Morris, Chief Digital Officer for SA Health; “SA Health and the Office for ICT and Digital Government was pleased to work with Microsoft to deploy Teams so clinicians and staff can access a secure, modern communication and collaboration platform from anywhere, at any time, and on any device including iOS and Android.
At a time when many of our staff were required to work from home, the ease of use of Teams meant we needed to provide minimal training. Clinicians and staff recognised quickly adopted the technology, resulting in exponential growth in uptake; to 13,000 users in just two weeks.
While Teams was deployed rapidly to meet an acute and urgent need, SA Health has already indicated it plans to use Teams as its communications and collaboration platform for the future and even after COVID-19 is brought under control.
For example, it plans to explore how Teams could be leveraged in more clinical scenarios and be integrated with core applications such as the Sunrise EMR (electronic medical record).
Lee Hickin, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Australia; “The impact that SA Health has been able to achieve by its rapid deployment of Teams is impressive. Clinical teams have been able to communicate quickly and clearly from any device and any time, optimising patient outcomes without compromising their own safety and security.”
SA Health has seen large user adoption with over 400,000 chat messages and over 25,000 calls happening on the platform already, with these numbers continuing to grow daily.
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