Surgery students deal all sewn up

Trade

2 October 2008

Pictured: Typetec’s Tom Close, left, with RCSI’s Terry McWade and Typetec’s Beryl Furlong

Typetec has won a €750k contract to supply 600 laptops to incoming students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). In addition, the managed IT services firm will continue to provide the entire IT support function for the RCSI’s Irish operations.

The laptops are used by all students and teaching staff to access course materials and lecture notes across the college’s network. Some lectures are recorded and made available online for students. Students can also submit essays, projects and other coursework to their lecturers electronically.

Typetec is also assisting in the planning and development of RCSI’s new Bahrain campus, which began last year. The firm has previously been involved in developing RCSI’s other campuses at Penang in Malaysia and at Dubai.

RCSI became the first Irish college to issue laptops to incoming students, fifteen years ago. This year also marks 20 years since the college and Typetec began working together, and the completion of a decade of Typetec’s onsite support operations for RCSI.

Typetec acts as RCSI’s outsourced IT department, with 11 full time staff on RCSI campuses. One is based in Beaumont Hospital, with the other 10 at the St Stephen’s Green campus. Typetec also proactively supports RCSI’s facilities at St James’, Rotunda and James Connolly hospitals in Dublin, and the regional hospitals in Waterford, Kilkenny, Mullingar and Navan. Typetec’s IT operation daily supports over 2,500 students, staff and visitors.

The RCSI’s deputy CEO, Dr Terry McWade, noted: “A university such as ours is a particularly challenging IT environment. We want to provide the best and most flexible learning environment for our students. The long relationship we’ve built up with Typetec and its staff ensures that they partner with us in the truest sense – together we are developing RCSI and medical education in Ireland and abroad.”

Typetec MD Tom Close added: “The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland has a reputation as one of the world’s leading academic users of information technology.” Close said the college had been instrumental in the development of the first online surgery training program, Basic electronic Surgical Training (BeST).

“Typetec is proud to play a part in RCSI’s continued ground-breaking use of technology in medicine and medical education.”