14 DAY TRIAL // NHS Scotland will upgrade systems to Microsoft Office 365 and Windows 10 in order to provide staff with access to collaboration and communication features.
No less than 161,000 employees will be provided with access to new technologies thanks to more than 100 systems that will be upgraded to latest-generation Microsoft products, according to a press release.
“We'd like clinicians to be able to collaborate with colleagues elsewhere to easily share and record information and to be able to have better coordination, of diaries and meetings so that less time is spent in the administration and more time is spent on direct clinical care,” Geoff Huggins, director of the NHS Education for Scotland Digital Service, told Computerworld UK.
Running away from Windows XP
The upgrade to Office 365 and Windows 10 is part of the National Digital Platform push, and would help NHS Scotland make sure that its solutions are always updated and secure.
“A key business objective for the NHS in Scotland more generally was to address some of the issues around maintaining software in up-to-date versions and having similar or the same versions of the software in place across all of the staff groups, but also increasingly using the Azure Active Directory to effectively allow authentication beyond the Microsoft products,” Huggins continued.
NHS Scotland migrating to Windows 10 and Office 365 is a major step towards securing critical information like patient details.
Not a long time ago, systems operated by NHS Scotland were infected with the WannaCry ransomware because they were powered by Windows XP. Launched in 2001, Windows XP no longer receives updates as of April 8, 2014.
Back in May 2017, NHS Scotland still had some 6,500 Windows XP computers in use, as well as several devices powered by Windows Server 2003.