King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

King’s College Hospital Charity were looking to update their patient engagement offering in a way that appealed to their diverse range of patients and streamlined digital transformation for the benefit of staff as well. Aiming to install a buildable solution that was able to grow and expand over the coming years, King’s College Hospital Charity came to SPARK TSL to guarantee they received an entirely managed and tailored solution.

About Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Organisation type

NHS Foundation Trust

Size of operation

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust covers five sites, SPARK TSL's solution is deployed in all of them.

4,500+ Staff
1670+ Beds

Client since

2005

Product suites

Staff and guest-access WiFi
SPARK Fusion® Web
SPARK TSL Managed Service
24/7/365 UK-Based Service Desk

What makes King's College brilliant?

The King’s College Hospital Crown Fund enables investment in smaller-scale innovations that have the potential to make a big difference to patient outcomes.

The Hospital was featured in Channel 4’s documentary 24 Hours in A&E.

The King’s Stars recognition programme is funded by King’s College Hospital Charity as a means to celebrate the outstanding delivery of care, boost morale and improve staff retention generating a supportive staff environment.

Goals

Provide free, round-the-clock entertainment for all patients, even for those without access to their own device.
Accessible patient engagement platform on both patient-owned devices and Trust-owned tablets
Provide reliable coverage across every site
Increase charity exposure
Facilitate easy access to NHS digital services
Create a buildable solution that can be added to over time
Offer a reliable Service Desk and support system available 24/7/365

About King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

One of London’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals, King’s College Hospital has a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. The Hospital’s specialist services are nationally and internationally recognised in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, haemato-oncology and foetal medicine.

Supporting the Trust is King’s College Hospital Charity. Striving to make a difference to patients and their loved ones across the Trust by supporting developments that go above and beyond the NHS’ offering, their aim is to assist in the delivery of a better experience and better results for the people who come to them in a time of need.

We’re delighted to have been able to support this project as part of our work to improve patient experience at King’s. We know that patients can struggle with boredom - especially when admitted to hospital for days or weeks at a time, or while waiting for outpatient appointments – and we hope that providing some entertainment to pass the time will help alleviate frustration, whilst also easing some of the pressure on staff. We are thrilled to be collaborating with the Trust on this project and with so much scope for development, look forward to working together to enhance services in the future.

- Iona Joy Director of Grants, King’s College Hospital Charity

A historic relationship building to the future

Back in 2005, SPARK TSL began its first NHS contract with King’s College Hospital. Originally facilitating a guest-access WiFi solution that utilised the existing WiFi infrastructure in place, SPARK TSL ensured the delivery of a reliable, configurable, and secure network for patients to use as well as the staff. The flexible nature of the solution meant that King’s College Hospital was provided with bandwidth control, content filtering, comprehensive usage reports and a branded user experience (UX) portal to promote Trust branding and engage with the user.

After 16 years of friendship and the provision of a guest-access WiFi solution that has kept patients connected without having to use their data, King’s College Hospital Charity began looking into ways it could upgrade the patient engagement platform provided to Trust visitors. Across the NHS there has been a renewed investment in digital transformation, innovations in the field of health-tech now mean that integrations can be made between clinical and facilities capabilities to produce one platform for all. Looking to their old friend SPARK TSL, the two began developing a tailored solution that brought the latest innovation to five King’s College sites in 2021 - a platform that has continued to evolve and advance through 2025.

The key to the success and take up of the system was the ease of use and overall customer experience. The SPARK system was customised and enhanced in such a way that we could just plug our server into their existing infrastructure and then start generating revenue for the Charity

Matt O'Donovan

Founder of SPARK TSL

The solution: SPARK Fusion® Web

Available to patients, staff and visitors at each of the five sites including Denmark Hill, Princess Royal University Hospital and Orpington, SPARK Fusion® Web ensures that everyone on site can relax with a variety of entertainment offerings and be informed of the hospital services including their charity. It’s all available on their own personal devices after logging in to the WiFi.

The current BYOD solution features everything in the Base package:

Live TV
Live Radio
10 Puzzle games
Charity help and information
Unlimited resource links, e.g. website, BBC Archive, PALS
PDF leaflets for hospital information or services
Tab customisation

Complete Managed Service

One of the original goals back in 2005 was to ensure that any digital adoption did not add administrative or maintenance duties to staff. This is why SPARK TSL guarantees its entire managed service. With the network being monitored by SPARK TSL engineers, any issue will often be spotted before the customer or end-user even knows it’s there. To directly support the customer or the end-user with any queries or difficulties, SPARK TSL has an active 24/7/365 UK-based Service Desk on-hand to keep the solution in order.

Return on Investment

Part of their solution has been funded by King’s College Hospital Charity, an incredible organisation whose aim is to ‘make the best care for patients possible by raising money for cutting edge equipment, facilities, supporting staff, innovative research and pioneering treatment’.

The charity can expect to see an increase in exposure from both the existing awareness on the WiFi Authentication Portal, and now through SPARK Fusion® We. With a dedicated tab and charity banner at the bottom of all pages, patients and visitors can now easily find links to the charity’s latest news, donation links and website.

Creating opportunities to increase exposure for the charity and provide the Trust with a survey tool to obtain real customer feedback on overall hospital experience

The Future

King’s College NHS Foundation Trust has set out their priorities from 2021-26 as being establishing ‘strong roots’ and building ‘global reach’. Across the NHS, digital transformation is making leaps and bounds in updating services for patients, visitors and staff and it’s through this digital transformation that King’s College can establish its strong roots and expand its reach.

The beauty of a SPARK TSL solution is that it is entirely future proof. King’s College Hospital Charity can further expand their offering later by investing in other SPARK TSL innovations. This includes SPARK Fusion® iPads - designed to revolutionise entertainment and engagement at the bedside. On this platform, even more applications are available to the patient such as digital meal ordering services, translation services, or entertainment staples like Netflix and Disney+.

By adding a bedside solution to the current BYOD and Trust device offerings, the Trust could look to tailor the services provided to patients as well as reap further rewards on cost and efficiency savings.