NHSmail migration completed

NHS Connecting for Health has announced the successful migration of NHSmail to Microsoft Exchange 2007.

The end of the migration was announced at Healthcare Computing, where Martin Bellamy, director of programme and system delivery for CfH, said it had been “by far the largest transition of its type in the world.”

Cable and Wireless, which supplies the NHSmail service, started the migration in January. Over 12 weeks, 350,167 user accounts were successfully moved to the new service, covering 1,381 organisations across England and Scotland.

At present, the NHS has around 1.2m staff. CfH hopes that 500,000 will have an NHSmail account by 2011.

However, despite an uptake in demand for the service, E-Health Insider understands that many trusts plan to continue to run their own email systems.

Comments posted on the EHI site have identified a number of limitations with NHSmail; for example, that users dislike its password requirements and that it is difficult to send encrypted messages outside it.

Will Moss, programme head for NHSmail, said in Harrogate that he did not accept this should be a barrier to uptake. “This issue can be simply solved as long as two organisations share a common piece of architecture to send encrypted attachments,” he said.

He added that if trusts experience problems when they are sending mail to each other because one trust is using NHSmail and the other is not, the easiest solution is that they both use NHSmail.

He also argued: “One of the key problems is that many trusts like having email at a local level as they feel that t is their own thing, although this argument is declining.”

NHSmail is now in a “stabilisation period” until the end of May. This means there can be no new users of NHSmail until the period ends.

See also: Southend secures email with Proofpoint

Link:NHSmail