Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust Optimizes 24/7 Clinical IT Operations with Advanced Load Balancing Solution
Products:
Kemp LoadMasterChallenge
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust faced multiple challenges with its legacy load-balancing setup. It was routing traffic without intelligence and the vendor had exited the market, necessitating a strategic replacement. Applications, spreadsheets and databases relied on hard-coded IPs and hostnames, complicating migrations, upgrades and infrastructure changes with high risk and downtime.
Solution
- Deployed multiple highly available LoadMaster instances (now consolidated to a larger HA pair across two data centers) to front key applications.
- Optimized distribution enables zero-downtime patching and scaling for 24x7 hospital systems with Layer 7 intelligence with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) offloading.
- Expanded security standards by implementing built-in security controls like web application firewalls (WAF).
Result
- Enabled continuous clinician access to patient data with zero downtime, supporting seamless, timely and reliable care delivery.
- Accelerated application logins by approximately 75–80%, cutting typical login times from an average of 2–3 minutes to under 30 seconds across multiple shifts while eliminating 45 legacy WNLB clusters to slash network overhead.
- Standardized deployments and security via pre-built templates, built-in WAF, and TLS policies, cutting rollout times and extending perimeter-grade protection to internal apps.
Full Story
Challenge
Based in London, England, the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust currently serves as both a healthcare facility, which provides everything from cardiology to mental health services, and an academic health science center. While the healthcare professionals are working hard every day to solve problems in their respective fields, the Trust IT department was experiencing issues in day-to-day operations.
The team had originally deployed a Cisco-based load balancing solution that, while helpful at one point, proved to be ineffective as the organization grew. For instance, the content switching often misrouted web traffic to servers that were already overloaded with traffic or as Yusuf Mangera, Technical Architect for the Trust told us, “It just kind of sent traffic to places.”
The organization had a zero or near-zero downtime maintenance requirement, not only for handling IT operations like security fixes but also for medical professionals to provide services for patients. The risk of downtime is also related to data migration and infrastructure upgrades. The Trust’s IT team struggled with hard-coded crucial business applications and databases.
Being a public sector organization, the Trust required strong cybersecurity measures. The internal security needed to be better aligned with perimeter standards through transport layer security (TLS) standardization and web application protection.
You have to understand that we're not a typical 9-to-5 business. We're a hospital that needs to run 24/7. LoadMaster gave us the ability and the luxury of managing our systems without incurring any downtime or service-affecting updates that would cause services to go down.
Yusuf Mangera
Technical Architect at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Solution
After putting out a bid for a new solution and evaluating vendors like F5, the Trust chose the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution as its features and flexible pricing aligned with the organization's long-term goals.
Initially deployed as multiple highly available instances across the network, the LoadMaster solution enabled the Trust to present applications behind stable service names while allowing backend infrastructure to evolve. Over time, improvements in network connectivity—including high‑bandwidth links and diverse paths—allowed Imperial to consolidate its environment into a single, larger high‑availability LoadMaster pair spanning two data centers, simplifying management while maintaining resilience.
A key LoadMaster capability that stood out to Trust’s IT team was the Layer 7 intelligence, which helps manage traffic more proactively. Built-in security capabilities, including web application firewall controls and standardized TLS, extend consistent security practices across both internal and external services. Instant configuration changes and pre‑built deployment templates further accelerate project delivery.
“You have to understand that we're not a typical 9-to-5 business. We're a hospital that needs to run 24/7,” recalled Mangera. “LoadMaster gave us the ability and the luxury of managing our systems without incurring any downtime or service-affecting updates that would cause services to go down.”
Result
Over the past decade, the IT team at Imperial College Healthcare has realized significant value from deploying the LoadMaster solution. Exceptional support from subject matter experts has provided consistent, single-point resolution for all queries, no escalations needed. Fast deployment with pre-built templates and streamlined configuration changes accelerated rollouts and sustained a trusted partnership through two major refresh cycles.
Routine patches, zero-day fixes and system upgrades no longer disrupt hospital operations. Clinicians can access critical patient data without interruption, even during system maintenance, maintaining continuity of care across hospital sites. LoadMaster has also accelerated application logins by approximately 75–80%, cutting average login times from 2–3 minutes to under 30 seconds across multiple clinical shifts. This performance leap coincided with the elimination of 45 legacy WNLB clusters—reducing network overhead and simplifying maintenance.
The platform has standardized deployments and enhanced security with pre-built templates, built‑in Web Application Firewall (WAF), and TLS policies, helping the organization extend perimeter-grade protection to internal applications and reducing rollout times.
“From a day-to-day operations perspective, as well as from project initiation through delivery, the process is very straightforward for two main reasons. First, the support portal offers a wide range of templated designs, giving organizations a quick head start when setting up common infrastructure or service types. Second, it allows users to easily set up simple services and build on them as needed.”
Thanks to Progress, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust can now focus on delivering reliable, high‑performing systems that give clinicians the support needed to provide robust, patient‑centered care 24/7. The organization has also freed up time and resources to dedicate towards further digital transformation—preparing its infrastructure for future scalability and cloud-readiness.
From a day-to-day operations perspective, as well as from project initiation through delivery, the process is very straightforward for two main reasons. First, the support portal offers a wide range of templated designs, giving organizations a quick head start when setting up common infrastructure or service types. Second, it allows users to easily set up simple services and build on them as needed.
Yusuf Mangera
Technical Architect at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust