NHS hits 18,000 broadband connections target

The N3 broadband backbone which is part of the £12.4bn NHS IT modernisation programme has passed a key milestone after hitting the target for connecting 18,000 sites two months early.

The £530m project is being run by BT and is key to the delivery of new services such as electronic prescriptions and the Picture Archiving and Communications digital X-ray system.

The N3 network links up surgeries, hospitals, community pharmacies and other NHS sites. Richard Granger, director general of the NHS Connecting for Health programme, said almost 97 per cent of GPs and more than a million NHS staff are now connected to N3.

He said in a statement: "The National Programme has gained significant momentum. Nowhere is this more evident than with N3 where we have created one of the largest virtual private networks in Europe and deployed 12,000 miles of fibre optic cables. This has been delivered at 40 per cent of the cost of the old network which only served around half the NHS."

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The next phase of the N3 project will see more sites added, remote connections provided and the introduction of voice products to help cut NHS telephony costs.

In addition, BT has also won new contracts worth a total of £36m to provide voice and data services to five NHS organisations - the Kent and Medway Health Informatics Service, North Merseyside Health Informatics Service, Peterborough and Stamford Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Sussex Health Informatics Service and United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

BT will provide a "community of interest" converged voice, data and video network for each of the five NHS organisations using the N3 broadband network. Essex NHS Strategic Health Authority has recently completed a similar project.

Dr Mario Guarino, director of Kent and Medway Health Informatics Service, said the new network will deliver significant networking cost-savings for the community.

He said in a statement: "When complete it will link up more than 260 sites, ranging from small sites to large acute hospitals. As well as underpinning NHS National Programme applications such as the NHS Care Records Service, the additional bandwidth will enable us to support a variety of local applications such as voice and video in the future."