Northumbria Healthcare cuts load time by 99% and significantly improves case handling times with Windows 365

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside. This broad geographic reach introduces significant complexity in delivering care consistently and efficiently. Like many public healthcare systems, the Trust has faced growing demand, limited resources, and the pressure to modernize while maintaining the highest standards of care. That meant rethinking not just how staff work, but where they work.

Leadership at the Trust has long prioritized quality improvement, innovation, and workforce flexibility as core values. One growing challenge was meeting the demand for radiology services without over-relying on third-party reporting and finding ways to deliver faster results to patients. Radiologists working remotely struggled with slow image loading, poor connectivity, and an aging infrastructure. “It was quite challenging and frustrating,” says Janice Ross, General Manager for Clinical Support and Cancer Services at Northumbria Healthcare. “Sometimes they’d have to abandon reports due to delays in the system, and then pick them up the next morning when they arrived at one of the hospital sites to finalize them, once they could see all of the images at better speed and quality.”

These limitations delayed report finalizing and reduced productivity.

Removing barriers to remote productivity

With more than 400,000 diagnostic images processed each year and a workforce spread across both rural and urban sites, radiologists were increasingly working off-site, often outside standard hours, to keep pace. Supporting that flexibility had become essential to care delivery, not merely a convenience. However, the existing Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), which stores and delivers diagnostic images, didn’t support virtualization or remote access, making off-site work difficult and inefficient. Bob Beckwith, Innovation and Transformation Manager at Northumbria Healthcare, notes that radiologists often faced long delays accessing images and constant frustration.

The digital services team needed a solution that would deliver a seamless experience for radiologists working off-site, with the same responsiveness and reliability as working in a hospital environment. The team found what they needed in Microsoft Windows 365 and Microsoft Intune. Windows 365 provides Cloud PCs with hospital-grade performance at home, while Intune enables centralized management and ensures compliance with strict NHS governance standards.

To prepare for broader adoption, the Trust brought in Phoenix Software to assess and strengthen its Windows 365 environment, ensuring clinical readiness, resolving key issues, and confirming operational fit for frontline healthcare users.

Dr. Harsh Merchant, Consultant Radiologist at Northumbria, had firsthand insight into just how urgent the need was. He recalls, “Prior to Windows 365, working from home meant struggling with slow VPN connections. Even after upgrading broadband, I was still waiting three to seven minutes just to load a single CT scan. If I had to compare prior studies, that wait time multiplied. I was wasting time, and so were patients.” Dr. Harsh Merchant brought a deep technical interest to the conversation, working closely with the digital services team on deployment and adds, “With Windows 365, you’re no longer downloading massive image files to your device. You're working directly in a secure cloud-based environment. It gave us the consistent, high-quality experience we needed to work effectively off-site.”

Dr Harsh Merchant wasn’t the only one highlighting the urgency. James Niel, Senior Technical Architect at Northumbria Healthcare, had been exploring options that would streamline remote access and simplify device management. He explains that existing familiarity with Intune played a major role. “Because we were already using Intune and were familiar with its portal, deploying Windows 365 was straightforward. We could ship secure, compliant devices that worked out of the box, saving us hours per user and dramatically reducing support calls.”

Mark Holland, Deputy Director of Infrastructure, says this was a key reason the Trust moved quickly. “A key benefit of Windows 365 is that it reduces contention across every level of the tech stack, and Intune plays a big part in how we configure and manage that environment,” he says. “We’re not relying on intermittent home broadband anymore. We have a dedicated, uncontested route into the data center, giving radiologists the fastest performance possible.” The deployment was also complemented by the Trust's existing Azure Virtual Desktop network architecture. Bob Beckwith reinforces that point from a user-experience perspective. “Windows 365 mimics and sometimes provides even better performance than on-premises systems,” he says. “Radiologists can have that natural experience they’re used to, and ultimately they can focus on the task in hand more easily.”

Dr. Harsh Merchant says speed wasn’t the only requirement. “We had to maintain image fidelity. I needed to be confident that what I see at home is exactly what I’d see on a hospital workstation. And it is. Windows 365 gives us full diagnostic quality.” Security and compliance were non-negotiables. Intune supported a secure setup without adding unnecessary complexity. The team reused existing firewall rules, leveraged elements of its Azure Virtual Desktop networking infrastructure, and extended the same policies already applied to Windows 11 devices—including screen capture protection and watermarking—to Windows 365. “I haven’t had a single day where Windows 365 didn’t work,” Dr. Harsh Merchant says. “The resolution matches what I see on-site. It’s consistent and reliable, and the dictation works flawlessly.”

The Trust approached adoption through collaboration. Bob Beckwith says the team involved radiology champions early. “We ran show-and-tell sessions and tested everything from image quality to microphone compatibility. Their feedback confirmed we had it right.”

The successful rollout also positioned the Trust to move beyond radiology. Holland says, “We’ve built something fast, secure, and consistent. It’s already getting attention from across the organization.” Bob Beckwith agrees. “What we have now is a repeatable framework. Anywhere that needs secure access to hospital systems from outside the hospital can use this.”