Rapid implementation of Microsoft Teams in response to COVID-19: one acute healthcare organisation’s experience

Background COVID-19 presented significant challenges to healthcare organisations, which needed to rapidly remodel their services but were unable to allow staff to meet face to face to minimise infection risk. During this communication predicament, National Health Service (NHS) Digital announced the provision of Microsoft Teams, a digital communication and collaboration tool, which was implemented at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust within 2 weeks. Method Given the need to deploy at scale, rapidly and with minimal resource, an agile decentralised innovation management approach was used, empowering staff to be local implementors. Results Resulting use cases were highly original and varied, ranging from a COVID-19 Education Programme to coordination of oxygen demand. Analytics showed rapid and persistent adoption, surpassing 500 daily active users within 11 days. Usage continues to increase, consistent with a direct network effect. Conclusion These findings suggest a high demand for this format of communication and high willingness to adopt it. Further qualitative research into staff perceptions would be valuable to confirm this, and to assess the user experience. Overall, this has been a radical approach to digital implementation in healthcare, and has so far proved effective in delivering a cost minimal, rapid communication tool at scale in the midst of a global pandemic.