Imaging solutions specialist Lexmark has been selected by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT) to supply its managed print services.
One of the largest integrated organisations in the UK, the Trust provides hospital and community services to over 650,000 people through a workforce of more than 8,000 colleagues.
Supporting the NHS' drive towards interoperability and 'paperlite' working environments, the agreement will see Lexmark initially introduce a flexible managed print platform to enable future digital transformation strategies.
Due to the scale and size of the organisation - as well as the increasing number of staff and clinicians working remotely across multiple sites - the CDDFT said its chosen partner needed to have experience of distributed fleets and the capability to maximise the efficiency of mobile working.
"Lexmark was a clear leader in our review of the market," said Clare Povey, associate director of procurement at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. "They have a number of large NHS Trusts as customers and really understand the changing requirements of the current landscape. Our organisation is constantly evolving with people and services being in a state of flux."
As part of the agreement, Lexmark's multi-functional printers will also help deliver insights and analytics to highlight where the Trust can reduce printing and the associated costs over the term of the contract.
In addition to implementing the MPS platform, the first stage of the 'paperlite' shift will also involve future-proofing to allow more strategic workflow optimisation and digitisation initiatives to be deployed both from the outset and later down the line.
"Best practice MPS is not just about multifunctional devices and printers; it's really about the staff and how they can become more effective," commented Nick Reed, enterprise sales director at Lexmark Global Services, UK & Ireland. "Lexmark MPS devices become productivity tools for better information access and more productive processes.
"Lexmark has been at the leading edge of MPS for many years. Our professional consultants have completed thousands of assessments of complex and distributed environments throughout the UK and globally."
