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NHS organisations in south-east England choose BT for HSCN
BT will provide broadband services over the Health and Social Care Network to 24 NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups in the south-east of England
NHS organisations in the south-east of England have chosen BT as its connectivity provider as part of the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) contract.
As part of the five-year deal, 24 NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGS) across Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Kent, Berkshire and Sussex will be able to order several communication services from BT during the transition to HSCN.
HSCN replaces the old N3 network, which has been run by BT, and aims to enable NHS organisations to easily and safely share patient information between GPs and hospitals, making it easier to communicate and make decisions about patients in real time. This includes services such as fibre broadband, digital voice services and video conferencing.
The contract is part of a number of aggregated procurement run by NHS Digital across the UK. The large aggregate procurements are designed partly to de-risk the procurement and transition process for smaller NHS organisations that may not have the same resources or confidence levels of their larger peers, and to ensure that different organisations working across regions are better able to collaborate with one another.
BT director of local government and health, Danny Longbottom, said the supplier is “proud to be working in partnership with NHS Digital” to offer NHS organisations a range of services such as “embedded security enhanced features”.
South-east England is the fourth region to award its contract. In May 2018, Yorkshire and Humberside awarded its HSCN contract to Redcentric, followed by Kcom securing the north-east of England and London.
NHS Digital itself has also awarded its HSCN contract to BT, which it hopes will yield a “70% cost saving for improved internet connectivity to support increased adoption of cloud-based services, as well as cost effective private network connectivity to support access to existing systems”.
Some 13 suppliers, including BT, are so far fully accredited to offer live services on HSCN.
NHS organisations have been working on transitioning to HSCN for a while, and in July 2018, the NHS made its 100th connection to the new network.
Read more about HSCN
- Clevermed, a supplier of maternity and neonatal care record software to the NHS, reveals how users are benefiting after it switched to the new Health and Social Care Network.
- NHS Digital’s HSCN Dynamic Purchasing System framework has gone live, and the government is keen to get smaller services providers signed up.
- Network services provider Kcom will supply broadband connectivity over the Health and Social Care Network to 10 health organisations in the north-east of England.
