Taking new heart: the transfer from NHSnet to N3
The heart of electronic communications in the NHS for well over a decade
has been its national intranet, NHSnet. Traffic on this network is presently
being transferred to a new secure intranet — the National Network for the
NHS, N3 — which provides a combination of broadband connections and network
services for NHS sites in England and Scotland. Len Chard reports on
the progress of the migration and the development of new services.
ABSTRACT
N3 is the new integrated network for the NHS, replacing its predecessor,
NHSnet. By 2007, a total of 18,000 NHS organisations will be connected to
the new network, which will provide the bandwidth to run all of England’s
National Programme applications. At the end of the first year of the
migration programme, more sites are now connected to N3 than remain on
NHSnet.
The N3 catalogue of services is expanding and enabling early advantage of
updates and improvements in networking technology. In addition to offering
data services at reduced cost, the N3 service provider has also focused on
reducing the costs of NHS voice and telephony services. The N3 service
provider will be implementing connections across the healthcare sector to
any organisation delivering NHS services, and is already focusing on
connections to dentists, pharmacies, prisons, socialcare settings and mental
health services.
Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2005; 22(6): 13–14. |
