PC Power Management

The Trust has over 5000 PC's and 500 laptops which are all used at varying times of the day. Following some initilal audits and requests from staff it became evident that many machines were being left on when they weren't in use. Due to the complex nature of the hospital environment and the diverse shift patterns, the traditional 'switch off' campaign had had little sucess and we realised that we needed to look into a more simple process which could be centrally deplyed across the whole IT estate and where differing policies could eb applied dependant on operational hours. After some initial evaluation and testing carried out by the IT department to ensure there were no interface issues, we found a product which was suitable. Thus far, the figures we had gleaned in relation to the savings potential fro our organisation had been supplied by the product provider. In order to quantify these figures and ensure that we could infact achieve the savings outlined in their proposal we installed and trialed the software for 30 days on 90% of our IT estate. The software is centrally deployed using the active directory, reducing on the IT project team. During the trial we measured both clinical and non-clinical PC usage against 2 parameters; machines which were left idle for a period of 30 minutes or more and  machines which were left on overnight . The results showed that 90% of clinical machine and 79% of non-clinical machines were left on overnight and that machines in clinical areas were idle for 81% of the day and for 86 hours in non-clinical areas. We then analysed the PC age profile and make and model %'s and the supplier was able to provide us with some acurate savings figures. The figures are based on switching all non-clinical PC's off at 7pm and back on at 7am, whilst leaving all clinical PC's on and employing a 30 minute idle time setting for the monitors. Both parameters can be overridden whilst working, for example if you are still working at 7pm a message will appear on your screen and you are able to 'coninue working' for another hour when the message will reappear, and again you can continue to work. The results showed that we would save £110,000 per annun and 790 tonnes fo CO2, and additional £10k p/a in CRC carbon tax. The business case was then prepared and approved on a 'spend to save' basis. The software has been up and running for 4 months now and is saving us on average £10,000 per month, which will out perform the original savings projections. There have been no operational issues and now the clinical teams are keen that the software is extended during the nightime to some clinical areas. The company we used was Certero and the product is PowerStudio.