NHS Wales to overhaul IT systems through Microsoft deal

The rollout will begin next month and provide over 100,000 NHS Wales staff with access to modern workplace tools.

NHS Wales has drawn up a £36 million deal with Microsoft, in a bid to strengthen its cyber defences and provide over 100,000 staff with access to Office 365.

According to NHS Wales, the move will offer its organisations and staff the 'robust, modern tools and capabilities needed to enable new ways of working and better collaboration'.

The organisation says that the rollout of Office 365 will enable GPs, consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics and support staff to 'communicate and securely share information more easily within the NHS'.

Andrew Griffiths, Director, NHS Wales Informatics Service, said: "This new national agreement is part of our commitment to refresh NHS Wales IT infrastructure and ensure it supports the transformational changes taking place across health and social care.

"It moves our digital estate away from locally managed services and into cloud-based services, delivering efficiencies and economies of scale."

Through the deal, NHS workers will be able to use applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel across multiple devices, including phones, tablets and laptops.

NHS Wales expects the migration to help staff save money and efficiencies across the board while freeing up time to focus on patient care.

It claims the tools will open up opportunities for collaboration 'without the need to travel and the potential for new approaches to triage and consultations through integrated media and video conferencing'.

As well as Office 365, the deal will also see NHS Wales' computing systems upgraded to Windows 10 E5. The operating system includes security features like Advanced Threat Protection.

Brokered via NHS Wales Microsoft licensing partner Trustmarque, the deal will run for three years and replaces a previous enterprise agreement that ends on June 30th. The rollout of Office 365 will begin on July 1st.

Griffiths added: "Frontline staff who work in our health and care services rely on technology to help them deliver services in new, innovative ways that put the needs of patients first. So I am very pleased that we are able to deliver the most up to date tools to our NHS Wales staff to help them with the fantastic work they do every day.

"It's essential that NHS Wales has secure systems that health staff and patients trust and this agreement will help achieve that. It will increase resilience and mean our services are running on the most up to date operating system at all times."