A guest post by Osirium, privileged access and IT process automation specialists.

Automation lets GP practices manage their own accounts

All IT Help Desks are busy; that may seem obvious. Unfortunately, many of the jobs they’re working on are not particularly high value, although they are important. Often, the most common task is resetting user accounts or passwords. Or creating accounts for new starters and removing access when someone leaves the organisation.

It would be better for both the end-users and IT if the users could take care of these tasks themselves. But that’s not easy as the tools to do the work are complicated and it’s too easy to make mistakes. Even worse, it could mean that if a user has their credentials stolen, an attacker could do significant damage.

In NHS Primary Care, this is as much a problem as any business. GP practices don’t have local IT experts, they deal with highly sensitive systems and data, and have to depend on a centralised help desk to take care of actions such as disabling accounts when a member of staff leaves the practice.

Transforming NHS IT with Automation

Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) wanted to solve the problem and selected Osirium Automation. Automation is the key capability as it ensures correct processes are followed, the administrator credentials used to access the systems being updated are always protected, and there’s an end-to-end audit trail of every change.

During their evaluation, they worked with the Hall Green Health practice to validate the approach. We caught up with Jamal Syed, Operations Manager for Hall Green Health who talked us through the project and the benefits they’re seeing.

The approach taken by MLCSU and Hall Green is widely applicable wherever there are remote locations that depend on centralised IT services.

Automation reduced the workload on IT Help Desks, improves customer service, and improves security.

To discuss how automation can help you deliver better IT service, please get in touch.