In a recent live Q&A facilitated by Alertive, representatives from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust shared their experience implementing, and then maximising, a digital solution. Here are the key lessons from that discussion:
Connectivity was handled pragmatically rather than treated as a blocker. Wi‑Fi and mobile coverage gaps are a reality across NHS estates, so Trusts focused on building resilience instead of waiting for perfect coverage.
NWL APG Deputy CIO - Telecoms/ Digital Health Records and Trust Director
There were nine evaluators in total. There were only two technical people. The rest of them were all clinical, and so they’ve ended up with the tool that they selected.
For all three Trusts, the decision to change was driven as much by clinical safety and operational risk as by any desire to modernise. At Imperial, repeated outages on the legacy paging system created a direct safety concern and a heavy burden on site operations teams, who were running radios around the hospital whenever parts of the system failed.
University Hospitals Dorset described a similar situation with ageing systems, fragmented workflows, and growing reliance on operational workarounds that were not sustainable.
Involving clinicians, switchboard teams, and non‑clinical staff early as well as undergoing an independent audit process provided a lot of clarity, and showed the Trust that maintaining the status quo was an active risk, not just a neutral option.
At West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, this was made explicit in the internal case for change.
Head of Digital Transformation
Alertive wasn’t just a nice to have for us. I think it was rather a solution to a real clinical safety risk that we were facing. So even with tight budgets, it became clear that doing nothing wasn’t an option and ultimately it would cost more and compromise patient care.
Connectivity was handled pragmatically rather than treated as a blocker. Wi‑Fi and mobile coverage gaps are a reality across NHS estates, so Trusts focused on building resilience instead of waiting for perfect coverage.
At Imperial, moving away from reliance on a single radio paging network was understood as a gain in resilience, because the new Alertive model combines Wi‑Fi as the primary connection, cellular data as a second layer, and SMS escalation if messages are not delivered within agreed timeframes.
Business continuity plans were explicit and tested, with Trusts keeping radios as a final fallback, asking staff to switch between Wi‑Fi and cellular during local issues, and using existing telephony platforms to deliver emergency messages where needed. The emphasis throughout was not on perfect infrastructure, but on having a clear, communicated plan for how to work safely when conditions are less than ideal.
Concerns about interruption, theatre time, and on‑call duties also came up repeatedly in the Q&A. None of the Trusts suggested that new tools like Alertive removed these pressures overnight, but they described how role‑based workflows and clearer visibility make a big difference.
At University Hospitals Dorset, moving to role-based communication helped make on-call work more manageable and transparent. Trusts also highlighted that the availability halo, which lets you know when someone was last active on the platform, helps avoid repeatedly trying to reach someone who is in theatre or clinic and unlikely to respond.
NWL APG Deputy CIO - Telecoms/ Digital Health Records and Trust Director
We’ve gone from one level of connectivity, which is the legacy radio, to two or three layers of connectivity, and that’s worked really, really well for us.
Telecoms Manager
You just pass a role on to a colleague just like you’d hand a bleep over. And they can have multiple roles at the same time, so instead of carrying two or three bleeps on their belt, they just carry two or three roles on one single device.
Another common denominator across Trusts was that adoption was driven forward by the real benefits that staff were experiencing in the middle of busy shifts. Teams started by using the platform to replace bleeps, but quickly began using Alertive more for group messaging and structured tasks because these functions helped them coordinate care and prioritise more easily under pressure.
Imperial’s clinicians began embedding richer context into conversations, including patient identifiers, images, and handover details, then saving those conversations back into the electronic patient record.
At Dorset, once initial concerns about change and training were addressed, use of Alertive steadily spread beyond clinical teams into estates, housekeeping, supporting emergency admissions, inter-site transfers, and timely handover processes. This showed staff that one app could cover multiple communication needs and reduce the number of devices and workarounds they had to juggle.
Head of Digital Transformation
Teammates use alertive to coordinate quickly and more safely, in a way that feels similar to WhatsApp but with the benefits of full security and clinical governance.
Finally, Trusts emphasised that no one needs to start from scratch. Alertive customers openly share documentation with peers, alongside hosting site visits so colleagues can see live environments and talk to switchboard and clinical teams.
The peer-to-peer approach means each rollout becomes smoother and better informed, with role configurations and training materials being updated and reused rather than recreated.
Dual running also played a key role in success. Running legacy systems alongside new workflows not only reassured staff but also exposed how fragile older platforms had become. West Suffolk replaced a catastrophically failed critical bleep platform with a much more capable setup in just a matter of days, and other Trusts found that testing new workflows in parallel helped build confidence before full cutover.
Imperial saw frequent paging outages that left operations teams scrambling with radios, reinforcing the value of shared learning and reusable documentation.
