
British Heart Foundation
Empowering Life Saving Technology with Microsoft Azure
The Customer
For over 63 years, British Heart Foundation (BHF) has been at the forefront of research into heart and circulatory disease, powering life-saving advancements in the field. Right now, 7.6 million people in the UK are living with heart and circulatory diseases. BHF is looking for new ways to prevent and treat these conditions to give people more time with the ones they love.
The Circuit
The Circuit – the national defibrillator network is one of the world’s most advanced defibrillator databases. Developed by BHF in partnership with Resuscitation Council UK, St John Ambulance, and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives.
This cutting-edge platform, built on Microsoft Azure technology, gives dynamic updates every 60 seconds, ensuring that all 14 UK ambulance services have the latest information on registered defibrillators.
Each year, there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK, yet fewer than one in ten people survive. Quick access to a defibrillator can more than double the chances of survival, but too often, these life-saving devices go unused simply because emergency services don’t know where they are.
Through our partnership with BHF, we have supported the enhancement, maintenance, and development of The Circuit, helping to increase the number of registered defibrillators and ensure they are visible and accessible when needed most. Together, we are helping to give more people a second chance at life.
Right from the start, we recognised in Hitachi Solutions a potential partner that would listen to us and really recognise the value of what we were trying to achieve, the lifesaving benefits of what we were trying to build and support.
Alex Duncan
Chief Technology Officer
The Challenge
In 2023, our Support Services team was awarded the contract to support The Circuit, ensuring its seamless integration into our support framework. Given the platform’s critical role in ambulance operations, maintaining continuous availability throughout the handover was essential. Our experts collaborated closely with BHF and its existing partner to deliver a smooth, disruption-free transition.
As part of the onboarding process, our solution assessment team conducted a comprehensive review of the platform’s architecture. This detailed evaluation provided a clear blueprint of The Circuit and uncovered several opportunities for enhancement. Upgrading the platform’s .NET framework was prioritised to improve performance and help future-proof the system.
We also identified a number of user experience (UX) improvements aimed at making the platform more intuitive and accessible. In addition, strengthening the system’s monitoring and analytics capabilities became a key focus, providing BHF with dynamic, real-time insights to maximise the platform’s impact.
The Solution
To ensure a smooth transition and provide the right level of support, our experts began by delivering dedicated application support services to BHF. This crucial first step – identified during our service support sessions – gave BHF the time needed to review and prioritise its backlog.
Before embarking on new development work, it was essential to clear these priority tasks. Within just four months, working closely with BHF, our joint team resolved issues, implemented key security enhancements and introduced an agile, sprint-based development approach to drive continuous improvements.
Building on the success of these development sprints, we collaborated with BHF to launch a major upgrade project, transitioning The Circuit to the latest .NET Core version.
We further improved the monitoring capabilities by implementing advanced telemetry and real-time tracking tools. These enhancements allow for proactive issue detection, ensuring potential disruptions are resolved before they impact ambulance services.
Scalability was another critical focus. By leveraging the power of Microsoft Azure, we configured dynamic, elastic cloud resources that automatically adapt to changing demand. This ensures The Circuit remains responsive, cost-effective, and capable of supporting BHF’s growing needs.
By early December 2024, following the successful upgrade and implementation of the enhancements, the new, enhanced version of The Circuit went live. Within days, BHF achieved a significant milestone – registering 100,000 defibrillators on the platform. This achievement underscored the system’s vital role in improving emergency response and helping to save lives.
For us, this project was more than just delivering technical upgrades – it was about truly understanding BHF’s mission and providing the right infrastructure to support it for the long term. Through this partnership, we’ve empowered BHF with a future-proofed, scalable and high-performing platform that enables them to continue making a life-saving impact.

There has been a huge amount of time and effort spent by everyone in the team…the results truly speak for themselves, and I really hope everyone is incredibly proud of their contributions to such an important programme, helping to save lives.
Rianna Poulos
Head of Product, Medical Technology

Key business benefits
- Strategic + trusted partnership: A trusted partner that truly cares about its mission and combines deep technical expertise with a hands-on, personalised approach.
- Enhanced visibility: Improved insights into The Circuit, enabling more informed decision-making.
- Improved registration process: Increased accessibility for guardians registering on The Circuit, improving efficiency and user experience.
- Comprehensive support: The support of our multidisciplinary teams, including UCD, LTS, project management, and testing, ensures smooth delivery and ongoing assistance.
- Flexible project management: An adaptable approach that caters to BHF’s dynamic organisational needs.
- Impactful results: Successful registration of 100,000 defibrillators to The Circuit, contributing to BHF’s broader life-saving efforts.
We were very lucky to have a technology partner like Hitachi Solutions to help up to identify how The Circuit itself needs to evolve as the technology around The Circuit would evolve.
Judy O’Sullivan
Director of Health Innovation Programmes
The Future
At the centre of our ongoing partnership with BHF is a shared commitment to saving lives. As The Circuit goes from strength to strength, we remain focused on identifying opportunities to register and deploy even more defibrillators, ensuring they’re readily available when needed most.
Innovative challenges like ‘how do we get a defibrillator to someone who is giving CPR to the patient?’ provide a unique opportunity for Hitachi Solutions to collaborate with BHF, pushing the boundaries of technology to create impactful solutions that make a real difference.
We are incredibly proud to be part of BHF’s journey, empowering the charity to help save more lives through The Circuit. Looking ahead, we’re excited to continue our partnership, exploring new ways to advance the platform.