NHS Kirklees, a primary care trust in the United Kingdom has deployed about 600 Panasonic Toughbooks thanks to a deal with BT Health that equips the care providers' staff for a variety of settings, including home health visits, according to a report in The Guardian.

Kirklees Community Healthcare Services (CHS) managing director Robert Flack: "The fact that it involves the patient working with NHS professionals to determine how their healthcare will progress is the really great thing. We've had 25 (in-depth) interviews with patients about the new system and they all love it."

NHS Kirklees believes it is saving about £600,000 (about $940,000 USD) annually in travel costs because staff are no longer returning to their facilities to pick up notes.

"However, as you would expect in the current financial climate, the key driver for mobilising our clinicians is centred on increasing productivity and reducing costs," Trevor Wright, NHS Kirklees deputy chief information officer, told The Guardian. "The business case for mobile health working has been proven with a number of deployments across the region that have demonstrated an increase in clinician productivity and significant cost savings, including reduced travel costs and a reduction in unnecessary hospital admissions."

Be sure to read the full article over at The Guardian