Gloucester NHS trust, which runs Gloucester Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital, was incurring overage charges from devices out in the field. They also sought a way to get faster, more detailed information on mobile device usage throughout their fleet. So, they turned to Jamf.
The challenge
Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust (GHC) uses 1,500 SIM-enabled laptops for clinical services across the UK. These laptops enable clinicians to provide care in the community and offer real-time access to clinical systems and other services that require an Internet connection.
While in their offices, employees are able to connect their laptops to the Trust’s secure Wi-Fi, but with many of these users working remotely, access to cellular data is vital to keep the workforce productive. With devices out in the field, managing data usage without receiving overage charges from their carrier was a huge challenge. Visibility on data usage was delayed and not granular enough for them to make informed changes and set controls to manage their costs.
Our data went from 400GB a month to over 3.2TB. We needed to manage this and understand why.
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GHC recognized the need to manage the data consumption of employees working in the field to curb unnecessary expenditure. However, the approach needed to be flexible, it couldn’t simply be a matter of imposing binary caps. Too many restrictions would be detrimental and could even stop a patient from receiving vital resources.
The results
Once deployed, GHC used granular policies to grant prioritized access to business-critical services, keeping the workforce productive while tightly managing how data is consumed.
“We cap users on a monthly basis while allowing business-critical apps so they can still do their job should they reach their cap.”
GHC also uses Jamf to block inappropriate applications to keep their policies in line with those working in the NHS offices.
“Jamf has helped us achieve greater visibility and control over our cellular estate. We’ve got the peace of mind that we know it’s not physically possible for our staff to use non-work-related apps like Netflix and Spotify when they’re using our SIM cards.”
The Jamf dashboard has provided the Gloucestershire IT team with the needed analytics into data usage. The policy can be informed in real-time, allowing administrators to take action where they see fit. There’s now no need to wait until the end of the month to see whether data has been used in a business-appropriate way.
“The portal helps us identify trends in data usage for the overall estate and for individuals. It allows us to see significant increases in data usage as soon as they happen, rather than waiting for our monthly bill from EE. This means we can be more proactive to see if any changes in our infrastructure have inadvertently caused increases in data usage which we can then rectify.”
Managing how employees use data is only part of effective mobility practices, the remote experience should be consistent with that of working in the office. Security shouldn’t be compromised nor should access capabilities. Jamf does just this, providing a zero-trust cloud security solution that enables businesses to truly embrace mobility.
NHS: organization profile
Gloucester NHS trust provides care for Gloucestershire and parts of Herefordshire in the U.K. The trust consists of more than 8,000 people and runs Gloucester Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital.
Gloucester NHS Trust provides a range of specialist acute services including regional cancer care for the two hospitals and maternity services at Stroud Maternity Hospital. The Trust has developed groundbreaking services such as Mobile Chemotherapy, as well as leading the country's Diabetic Retinal Screening and AAA Screening.