Unity upgrade taking place today from 10pm and into the morning of Thursday 27 August: Please ensure business continuity is in place where this may be required

August 26, 2020

Unity getting a code refresh tonight (Wednesday 26 August) from 10pm, with updates running through until tomorrow (Thursday 27 August) 7am. This will be one of its biggest updates since we implemented our electronic patient record however the changes which will be taking place are all ‘under the hood.’ Ward staff are still be able to give medications, document patient details and record observations as usual during this time. The services affected have been notified of the impact of this downtime and staff working overnight in these specific areas should already be aware of this.

Note: None of the processes or practices you have learnt will be changing, the system itself at first glance will look almost completely the same. Much of the underlying code that manages Unity will be updated to take advantage of improved processes delivering a much slicker, stable and most importantly safer experience for patients and colleagues.

The upgrade will take place overnight and will be one of the few updates that require elements of Unity to be taken offline for a short period. This will mean a short period of business continuity for certain processes.

The schedule of work is listed below including the time each system will expected to be taken offline.

Desktop notifications will be released across the Trust just before work begins on Wednesday 26 August from 10pm and subsequently as systems begin to return to normal operation. During this period it is expected that departments will revert to business continuity plans whilst the system is unavailable and return to normal operation as soon as works are complete.

Colleagues are reminded that Unity itself will still be available just that some functions may be limited during the down times listed in the table below.

Schedule of work:

The upgrade activity will be closely monitored but as always please call the 24 hour IT service desk if you experience any other issues on ext. 4050.

Note: Desktop Alerts to be released at 9pm and 9:45pm on Wednesday 26 August reminding colleagues of the planned upgrade and need to revert to BCP.