NHS email system ready to go live

The £35m NHS email system is due to launch on time later this month.

A directory of all 1.2 million employees will provide a standard email address that does not change as staff move around within the health service.

It has been developed by the NHS Information Authority (NHSIA) and consultant EDS (Computing, 16 May 2002).

Doctors and technologists have been working together to ensure the success of the project.

A folder explaining how to best use the system - the result of a year's collaboration between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the NHSIA - will be circulated to staff when the system is launched.

The focus is on developing processes for handling emails that are as robust as those for dealing with traditional post, says Grant Kelly, chairman of the BMA IT committee.

'We need to make sure we don't create a monster,' said Kelly.

'If you send a referral letter in the post, it goes into a very organised domain. There's a process in place in case people are on holiday, for example. If you are going to use email for sending clinical data you have to make sure it's not going to sit in someone's inbox for a couple of weeks.'

The guidance folder can't detail processes for every job in every NHS Trust - that will be a local responsibility - but it will provide general rules.

'You can't just fire off an email into the blue - you need to think about how to handle it, so the patient gets the best out of the new system,' said Kelly.

In the past the BMA has been against using email to send sensitive patient information because of concerns about security.

But fears have been allayed by the level of encryption available with the new system.

'It's starting to make sense to use email,' said Kelly.

Users will not have to use the encryption facility all the time, but it will be the default for clinical data, he says.