BT today announced it has more than doubled the capacity of the National Health Service’s (NHS) internet gateway – the part of the health service’s N3 private broadband network that carries traffic to and from the internet. The increased capacity will enable N3, one of Europe’s largest virtual private network, to provide faster access to the internet for more than one million healthcare staff who use it every day.
The gateway carries more than 250 terabytes of data a month – equivalent to nearly 55,000 standard DVDs worth of data – and was upgraded in two phases.
Having boosted the NHS N3 internet gateway performance from 1.82Gbps to 3Gbps this spring, the capacity has now been increased to 5Gbps and new enhanced functionality introduced, such as the prioritisation of traffic according to clinical and business need.
John Abbott, BT’s chief executive for N3, said: “Ever since the N3 network was first rolled out, BT and the NHS has continually sought to enhance the service to help health professionals work more effectively and efficiently.
“The internet gateway upgrade is delivering a faster, more sophisticated internet service for the NHS, and an improved capability for accessing healthcare applications. This is an important development for healthcare professionals who use internet-based applications to help provide effective healthcare to their patients, and will greatly benefit GPs, consultants, nurses, radiographers and anyone else in the NHS who uses the internet to access medical information.
“With N3 having already been upgraded to offer voice services and managed videoconferencing, today’s announcement is further demonstration of how the N3 network continues to evolve to meet the needs of a changing NHS while delivering efficiencies and improving clinical care.”
NHS staff have already started to see an improvement in performance since the gateway was upgraded.
Dr Nathan, a general practitioner (GP) based in Medway, Kent, said: “I have noticed a significant improvement in terms of speed and performance of the internet. This is particularly valuable to me when I am seeing a patient as I can quickly access drug and treatment information from websites such as the British Heart Foundation, British National Formulary, a reference guide to prescribing and pharmacology, and Doctors.net, a popular networking site for UK GPs. The reduction in the time it takes me to access this critical information helps me provide a better service and, over the course of a day, probably see more patients.”
The upgraded gateway infrastructure includes technology from US ‘software-as-a-service’ company Zscaler – whose web security service has been embedded to provide security and bandwidth management capability. NHS organisations considering a dedicated gateway can also opt to subscribe to Zscaler's advanced security services, without the need to deploy local hardware or software.
Charles Milton, Zscaler’s European, Middle East and Africa’s service provider director, said: “We are delighted to have been selected by BT to be its key technology partner for the internet upgrade programme.
“The deployment of Zscaler’s technology in the enhanced internet gateway is testimony to its commercial and technical scalability.”
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