NHS staff to be first for Office 2007

NHS employees are set to become some of the first people in the UK to get copies of Microsoft Office 2007 when it ships early next year.

Thanks to the Home User Scheme of the NHS's Enterprise Wide Agreement with Microsoft, health service employees will only have to pay a fraction of the standard price to be among the first to get hold of the full copies of Microsoft's new Office software.

John Coulthard, head of health for Microsoft UK, told E-Health Insider: "If NHS staff order in January they will be among the first in the country to get a copy of the new software."

He added: "To get their almost free copy all they have to do is register with their NHS email address on our website, and they can pay £18 to be a brand new boxed copy of Office 2007."

NHS staff who don't want to wait until January can already take advantage of the home User Programme, which forms part of the contract with NHS Connecting for Health, to enable NHS staff to buy heavily discounted copies of Office 2003 or Office XP Professional.  From the end of January the options will change to either Office 2003 or Office 2007.

The Home User Programme helps NHS employees save more than £300 on each purchase, and is available via a new online resource centre for the NHS. Deliveries are currently taking 8-10 days.

Coulthard says that since launching the new online site in August the take-up of the Home User Programme has been huge. "Since we put the new site up about 65,000 people have downloaded copies of Office."

The boss of Microsoft's NHS business team said that anyone working for the health service buying a computer for home use this Christmas should consider taking advantage of the scheme. "If you're buying a PC for the home or use by your family you should take a look at this. It's silly to spend more on software than you have to."

He explained that the home user part of the NHS EWA was introduced to help ensure all NHS staff have the opportunity to become more familiar with the standard PC desktop and operating system software used across the health service. "The NHS wants its people to be familiar with the technology they will use at work."

Coulthard added: "Putting better technology in people's hand is also a win for Microsoft – it's enlightened self-interest."