IT outsourcing company Accenture has bagged a five-year contract from the Department of Health in England and NHS National Services Scotland to deploy cloud-based NHSmail service.
Accenture will assist in offering secure communication to users of less secure systems such as non-NHS partners and patients. The IT services deal will benefit almost 700,000 health and care workers across the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Scotland.
Accenture and Avanade will deploy services as add-ons to the core service including a directory and Lync collaboration technology for enabling instant messaging, VoIP, audio and video communication and enhanced collaboration among NHS healthcare workers.
Aimie Chapple, managing director for Accenture’s UK health business, said: “The improved NHSmail service will provide significant digital technology improvements to help NHS staff drive even more effective collaboration at all points of patient care.”
Accenture and Avanade — supported by Avanade’s Unified Communications and Collaboration Managed Service (UCCMS) — will build new functionalities and maintain secure email and collaboration services. The two companies will also deploy a secure, multi-tenanted email service, based on Microsoft Exchange 2013, to replace the NHS’s existing platform, implemented in 2007.
