The Wellcome Trust plans to give its employees more choice over the type of device they use for work.

It already has 130 Apple iPads in circulation used mainly by the charity’s executive board, board of governors and committee members.

They were introduced gradually to reduce the amount of paper committee members had to carry around with them and the Trust has found that they have improved the efficiency of decision making.

Mark Bramwell, CIO at the Trust, told civilsociety.co.uk that the Trust looked at offering alternative tablet devices but that the iPad was the “best in class” at the time.

He went on to say that the future is not necessarily about which devices, and that “rather than focussing on the device we’ve been trying to focus on developing device agnostic* applications that people can access from their own devices in a controlled and secure way.”

He added: “We have a grown up policy – people have personal preferences and we should embrace that.”

Like many other organisations the Wellcome Trust already provides access to email accounts and by the end of the summer he plans to expand the range of Trust applications available on users own devices.

He says that there would be a wider selection of devices that staff could pick from or they will be able to provide their own device, however the Trust would not provide support services where people have brought their own devices.

*Device-agnostic software operates across various types of devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet PCs and smartphones.