Ampersand Appointed to Manage Outward Facing Communications for North Mersey Health Informatics Service
Ampersand has been appointed to help the North Mersey Health Informatics Service (HIS) manage its outward facing communications.
The North Mersey HIS provides Information Management and Technology (IM&T) support for eight of Merseyside's NHS Trusts and plays a pivotal role in the successful management of the Trusts IT Services, directly impacting upon patient care across North Mersey. The HIS was established in October 2006, bringing eight separate IM&T teams together into one shared service.
The success of the HIS management team in achieving the transition to a shared service was recently recognised by the Healthcare People Management Association when the organisation received a national award for Excellence in Internal Communications. The role of the HIS hasn't been communicated to the public, and so far only to a very limited extent within the industry. As one of the country's largest Health Informatics Services, they see themselves as leaders and innovators in their sector and feel they are in a position to make their work more public and have chosen to do this through a series of planned PR activities over the next six months.
Having a number of clients across the UK in this sector, Ampersand has been appointed based on their PR experience in the telecoms and IT arena.
"This is a very specialist subject and something that we are not known for in Liverpool, but we have enjoyed a great deal of success in this sector since the company's inception.
"It is a subject matter that requires a certain level of technical knowledge which our PR team have gained through other clients in this sector and will be able to utilise effectively to communicate quite a complex subject matter to the public and to the IT, Health and Communications sectors", said Managing Director, Emma Blackmore.
"Thanks to the hard work of staff since the HIS was formed in October 2006 we have delivered a range of successful projects and service developments. This success, coupled with the appointment of Bill Morrison, Director of Health Informatics and a recent customer survey showing that 94% of our customers are happy with the service we provide, puts us in a position, we feel, to let people know who we are and what we do, something we feel Ampersand can assist us with over the following six months", said Jeanette Galloway, Communications and Software Development Manager North Mersey HIS.