NHS approves off-shore cloud systems for medical record storage

NHS Digital has today announced that providers will be able to use public cloud services to store patient data.

This is the first time that health and care organisations have been able to use offshoring facilities to store this kind of information, which was previously almost always collected in on-site centres.

In comparison, other sections of the UK Government have been using cloud services since 2013, when the government began to recommend it for public sector use.

Although the data can be stored offshore, today’s guidance says it must be located within the European Economic Area, with a country that meets the European Commission’s data protection standards or with a US service covered by the Privacy Shield data-transfer agreement.

The decision has been made because cloud services offer advantages that cannot be achieved through other data storage plans.

The report explains: “Cloud providers have a significant budget to pay for updating, maintaining, patching and securing their infrastructure. This means cloud services can mitigate many common risks NHS and social care organisations often face.

“Cloud services may provide other advantages for NHS and social care organisations including lower IT costs and the ability to develop, test and deploy services quickly without large capital expense.”

There have been ongoing concerns about the safety of data in the NHS, particularly after the WannaCry cyber-attack last year.

It has prompted the NHS to put extra funding into defence, most recently with the development of the £20m Security Operations Centre (SOC), which will monitor national health and care services for problems.

This will include analysing information on different threats and informing the appropriate organisations and individuals to keep them prepared for the types of cyber-attacks they are most likely to experience.

Top image: scyther5

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