02.11.18
Major £80m IT upgrade for NHS Scotland will help protect against cyber attacks
NHS Scotland has signed a new £80m deal with Microsoft for a major technology upgrade which will give all 161,000 NHS employees access to Microsoft Office.
The deal will see NHS Scotland install new desktops, operating systems and office software at hospitals, clinics and other locations across the 14 Scottish health boards, meaning all staff will be able to use the same single platform.
The government investment into the Scottish NHS, to be spent over five years, will “crucially make our systems more resilient and give further protection against cyber threats.”
Health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “In Scotland, we are on a journey to fundamentally reshape the way our staff work together.
“We're creating the environment and the tools to allow staff and services to flourish.
“By consolidating hundreds of separate systems across Scotland’s NHS and care services, we can ensure that our hard-working staff are able to focus more on patients than processes.”
She said that the investment would help fulfil the NHS’s duty to protect people’s information safely and securely by protecting against cyber threats.
The WannaCry cyber-attack in 2017 reportedly cost the NHS £92m, disrupting thousands of appointments and locking down hospital IT systems across a one-week period.
The IT upgrade will now allow NHS Scotland to have a real-time view of any potential cyber threats, minimising the impact of any cyber-attack across the organisation.
All the Scottish NHS boards will be installed with Windows 10 E5, deploying upgraded Microsoft Office desktop products for all staff so they will no longer have to navigate through the “hundreds” of systems currently in place.
Cindy Rose, the CEO of Microsoft UK, said: “NHS Scotland staff do incredible work each and every day, however cross-department collaboration can be challenging due to the use of multiple systems.”
She said that moving to one common platform ensures that “staff will have the best tools available to work together seamlessly, ensuring they’re able to focus on what counts most – helping patients.”
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