NHS Digital has completed the world’s largest email migration to the cloud, moving 2.1 million NHSmail mailboxes to Microsoft’s Exchange Online platform.
The large-scale migration marks an important step towards creating a ‘joined-up’ NHS and equipping frontline services with the latest digital tools and services available. The move will enable more effective communication and provide better support to frontline staff as they continue to respond to the pandemic. It will reduce the burden of administration and ultimately improve patient safety.
The migration also aligns the NHSmail system with the Secretary of State, Matt Hancock’s vision for a cloud-first NHS.
NHS Digital’s Chief Executive, Sarah Wilkinson says: “The migration of NHSmail to Exchange Online has enabled us to provide staff across the NHS with a mail system which is functionally richer, more secure and lower cost.
“We have also deployed a Microsoft Hybrid implementation of Office 365 to the NHS mail platform, which is allowing NHS organisations to provision O365 services much faster, integrate with the existing NHSmail identity and collaborate more easily. These additional Office365 services build on the deployment of Microsoft Teams, which we rolled-out at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently used to send almost one million messages across the NHS every day.”
