Mercy Hospice deploys OpenTouch Suite for improved connectivity

Mercy Hospice Auckland, a New Zealand based provider of specialist community palliative care for people affected by life-limiting illness, has worked with Cogent to implement the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise OpenTouch Suite for SMBs to deliver improved connectivity and provide the foundation for a mobile workforce.

Mercy Hospice Auckland first implemented the OpenTouch Suite, including wireless network, unified communications and mobility services, at the hospice and seven retail shops around the Central Auckland area in June this year. The implementation is part of the organisation’s work to improve its infrastructure to improve connectivity among employees across different sites and multiple devices.

OpenTouch Suite for SMB was a choice for Mercy Hospice Auckland as it was able to provide a simple, end-to-end voice and data solution along with establishing wireless connectivity for the organisation, which will result in more collaborative communications as well as reduced costs in system maintenance.

Commenting on the implementation, Michael Misomphane, IT co-ordinator at Mercy Hospice Auckland said, “We really started with zero unified communication capabilities. We had a standard PBX-based telephony system that only offered voice calls. The majority of our organisation ran on wired connectivity and we relied on AirPort Express for limited wireless connectivity through some parts of our site.”

“Cogent and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise helped us establish a cost-effective, connected infrastructure in order to improve the experience for our in-patients by providing them with a broad range of reliable and robust communication services, such as email and live chat, to better connect patients with family and friends. Our nurses also now have the tools to engage and collaborate on the fly in order to spend more time with patients and less time on the phone.”

The initial solution took a period of three months to implement and the organisation is currently testing the My Instant Communicator mobile application with expectations to roll this out in the next phase. This application will deliver unified communication services to Apple iPhone and Android mobile devices, with features including single identity, directory lookup, enterprise telephony and call routing control.

The aim is to free its employees from the desks, particularly clinical staff that are required to travel to patients’ homes, but allow them to be reached anytime with a mobile application.