The Royal Marsden is a world leading specialist in cancer diagnosis, treatment, researchand education. It has two hospitals: one in Chelsea, London, and a health and science campus in Sutton, Surrey. They also have a Medical Daycare unit which they run in partnership with Kingston Hospital.

Being partnered with The Institute of Cancer Research enables The Royal Marsden to undertake research into new cancer treatments and therapies.

This partnership forms the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe, with 3,500 members of staff. The hospital is dedicated to excellence in the treatment and care of people with cancer and treats over 40,000 patients from across the UK and abroad every year.

The Royal Marsden’s existing in-house developed intranet had been in use for over 11 years. Although it provided staff with information on policies and guidelines, it did not possess a communications engagement tool to motivate, inform and involve staff in current debates and issues.

As the existing intranet was no longer meeting the hospital’s needs, it was decided that a new intranet should be introduced.

The new intranet needed to be:-

• Staff’s first point of contact for corporate information
• A modern sophisticated platform to build on in the future
• Customisable, in order to integrate with existing procedures and ways of working

Having set their criteria, The Royal Marsden undertook a rigorous tender exercise. Following this SORCE were selected as the intranet provider of choice.

SORCE were selected for the following reasons:-

• Provided a modern platform for future development
• Previous experience working with NHS Trusts
• Offering an innovative, flexible approach to the intranet project

The Royal Marsden was impressed by the product’s flexibility and potential to integrate with their existing back end systems. Another appealing factor was SORCE’s experience implementing intranets across many sectors as well as NHS Trusts.