27.06.19
NHS Wales gives staff access to Office 365 software
The NHS in Wales have signed a deal to give their 100,000 staff access to Office 365 software tools.
It is part of a plan to transform the infrastructure in the service, which falls behind NHS systems in other parts of the UK.
The deal was signed with Microsoft reseller partner Trustmarque and also includes a nationwide upgrade to the Windows 10 E5 operating system.
Andrew Griffiths, Director of 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.”
Mr Griffiths hopes the upgrade will help improve security on their systems. He added: “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.”
Programs such as Outlook and Sharepoint will be open to employees across multiple computing devices, including smartphones and tablets.