View the Staff.Care newsletter

Let's update you on the latest developments at SMI.   ● New SMI Staff ● New Website ● Training ● Hints and Tips ● Downloads ● WiFi Case Study

We have added 2 new members of staff to the team since our last newsletter. Andrew Bramley has been appointed as our new Business Development Manager for both Pal.Care and Staff.Care products to help with the continued development of the company. Phil Crimmins is our new Technical & Support Analyst working in the Support Department helping with customer queries, as well as helping with more technical issues. We are also currently recruiting for additional training personnel at our Nottingham Office.

Our new Web Site is designed to support our customers as quickly, simply and easily as possible. It also provides a portal for organisations with an interest in patient administration and staff rostering systems to review our products and latest developments.

Please have a look at www.smicare.com and let us know your comments. We hope you will like the improvements.

We are currently looking at software to offer our customers the option of Online Training. This will be the ideal option when you only require a couple of hours training on specific areas. This will eliminate the cost of a site visit and other additional expenses. We will give you full details soon.

Remember the Filter facility when looking up event details etc. You can be more selective with the filter look up facility, which makes it easy when looking for a particular item.

• If you Pack & Re-index at least once a month, you will find your software will run faster. Remember to make sure everyone is logged out of Pal.Care first.

• Don’t forget to Archive. Again, this will speed up your program. Please remember that if you archive the wrong patients, you will have to bring them back one by one! Both the Pack & Re-index and Archive functions are within your Pal.Tools program.

• New Staff. When entering a new member of staff onto Pal.Care via Definitions, Professionals, remember for Full Access change Rights to ALL and ensure that the correct level of security for the staff member is also added. The number of days before expiry may also need to be amended.

(These Hints and Tips will function across the SMI range, including Pro.Care and Multi.Care.)

A new V10 release is now available on our new website, go to the Customer Zone for all future downloads. This is only available to customers who have been upgraded to Version 10. The new release offers more SoftForm functionality.

If you still haven't been upgraded, please contact us for more information.

Case Study by Mark Lillie, ICT/IS Manager
The Hospice in the Weald

Hospice Network and WiFi Project

Overview. The Hospice network project involves splitting the network into three segments by the use of fibre optic cables linking edge cabinets to a main core cabinet. This segmentation of the network will form part of the new network infrastructure of the Hospice. The other part of the new network infrastructure will include wireless technology which will be used for Wi-Fi access for the public and employees of the Hospice.

The Wi-Fi network infrastructure is based on a Cisco wireless LAN (local area network) controller and lightweight access points. Security on the wireless LAN will be provided by using PEAP authentication utilising the existing windows server to provide Microsoft authentication and certificate services (IAS), along with a Cisco IDS to monitor the wireless LAN for intrusion and suspicious activity generally associated with viruses.

Project Detail. The scope of stage two of the Hospice network project concentrated around the Wi-Fi network infrastructure as this offered great advantages for the public or community and Hospice employees.

Wireless internet access is provided by the Hospice for patients, family members and the public. The wireless internet access is available within certain areas named Wi-Fi zones, these include all In-Patient rooms, the Day Therapy Centre, the reception lounge and the Education area. Loan laptops are available as well as the facility for patients to use their own laptop or PDA for internet access.

The wireless internet access and network access for the employees of the Hospice is of a secure nature and is only accessible by employees that currently, or intend to, hold a network login account (user name and password) and have a SSL certificate installed on the connecting device.

Extended detail of the public (Guest) and Private (Staff) wireless networks

Public wireless LAN. The public internet WLAN will not require authentication for network access and will only be allowed to access the internet. A Public internet access SSID will be configured and associated to the public VLAN. The Public SSID’s beacons will be set to broadcast making the network available to public internet clients and no encryption will be configured.

Private Hospice staff wireless LAN. With a wireless LAN, transmitted data is broadcast over the air using radio waves, so it can be received by any wireless LAN client in the area served by the data transmitter. Because radio waves travel through ceilings, floors, and walls, transmitted data may reach unintended recipients on different floors and even outside the building of the transmitter.

Installing a wireless LAN may seem like putting Ethernet ports everywhere, including in your parking lot. Similarly, data privacy is a genuine concern with wireless LANs because there is no way to direct a wireless LAN transmission to only one recipient. The proposed solution will provide secure access using 802.1x authentication using the LEAP authentication protocol and TKIP encryption for Hospice Staff. The Microsoft Internet Authentication Services (IAS) integrated with Microsoft Active Directory Services will be used as a backend user database to authenticate Hospice staff users.