Marc Bertasius, Microsoft Practice Lead Blog Post

Better together:
How Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium and Vyopta enhance our Managed MDT Service

March 24th, 2021

Following Dan Worman’s recent announcement that the Cinos Managed MDT service now supports Microsoft Teams, I wanted to spend some time talking about certain management aspects of the service.

As someone who works in IT, and whose mother dedicated nearly 50 years of her life working for the NHS in Critical Care, I am especially aware of the crucial role information technology plays in the successful treatment and recovery of patients, and moreover just how frustrating and time consuming it can be when that technology fails, not to mention potentially life-threatening.

MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team) meetings play a significant part in the care pathway for patients. It is imperative that the infrastructure and endpoints that make up the technology stack used for these meetings, is always available and easy to use.

High availability is particularly critical for a service that is required around the clock, especially when facilities or in-house IT support personnel may be limited.

Too much time can be lost by clinicians trying to make the technology work or figure out why a certain component is not functioning as expected.

Combining this with stretched clinical resources and a rising percentage of remote meeting participants means it is imperative that the communications and collaboration platforms that staff rely on work effectively at all times.

There are many aspects to consider when monitoring and supporting a solution such as the Cinos Managed MDT service. One thing that has made that mission critical service layer easier to manage is the pro-active signals and remote management capabilities provided by Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium, and the Collaboration Performance Management (CPM) and Workspace Insights provided by Vyopta.

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Exploring the benefits of Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium & Vyopta

Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium was launched in July of last year and provides 24/7 management and monitoring of MDT rooms. Building on the Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard licence and management capabilities available from the Teams Admin Centre, the Premium licence offers additional services, providing intelligent operations and enhanced insights, enabling Cinos to better manage the MDT meeting experience for customers joining from MTR devices.

Vyopta on the other hand, is a platform agnostic optimisation service that helps maintain high quality collaboration experiences for customers utilising traditional, standards-based endpoints, powered by the Cinos Cloud.

Both these services augment the control plane, providing such capabilities as:

  • Real-time Monitoring to quickly detect and troubleshoot issues.
  • Automated update management saves you time and resources.
  • Real-time alerts to notify you where and how to act.

  • Proactive Remediation resolves certain incidents on your behalf.

  • User behaviour analysis to examine technology adoption, and fine tune usability.

  • Track room utilisation to view how resources are being used.

These features and enhanced insights provided through rich analytics and reporting, allow Cinos’ Managed Services personnel to quickly and proactively resolve issues with MDT meetings before they cause disruption. This leads to increased efficiency, a better overall user experience, and greatly improved patient outcomes.

In short, they underpin the critical management capabilities that form part of the Managed MDT service, enabling Cinos to deliver an always-on, holistic collaboration platform that clinicians can depend on.

Of course, there are many collaboration settings within the NHS besides MDT meetings, and health services are just one industry than can benefit from a managed meeting service, underpinned by Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium and Vyopta.

Video Conferencing point solutions have a history of poor user experience with myriad examples of time lost trying to make the technology work. Organisations should carefully consider the productivity gains and opportunities to improve user experience and reduce support costs that a pro-active approach to meeting management can provide.

If you are looking for a Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium solution for your healthcare organisation and would like to discuss your requirements with an expert, please get in touch. We would be delighted to help.