Six hundred volunteers test NHSmail

Tags: A CfH iS Microsoft mobile Moss NHSmail Scotland Strategic

12 Dec 2008

NHS Connecting for Health is planning to start "extended user acceptance testing" of the new NHSmail platform on Monday.

Will Moss, programme head of NHSmail, said 600 volunteers would trial the new system until 9 January, when the first live accounts are due to be migrated.

In July last year, it was announced that NHSmail would move from its Mirapoint platform to Microsoft Exchange 2007. Migration was due to start this autumn. But in September, CfH wrote to strategic health authorities saying it would be delayed until the New Year.

Moss told E-Health Insider he was confident migration would start on 9 January, although he said that given the scale of the project he would be “brave and foolish to say that is 100% guaranteed.”

If all goes to plan, the programme will be “moving 30,000 accounts that weekend and for the ten weekends thereafter.”

Moss said the programme had been working its way through more than 1,000 ready for operation tests and the new platform had already performed well with 100,000 simultaneous users – or “three times the number we normally have on the platform now.”

He also said that it had stood up to third-party testing and proved popular in smaller-scale user acceptance tests. Users found the new system easy to use, liked the look of it, and reported it was “quicker”, he said.

The 600-user trial should allow underlying assumptions about how people will use the new platform to be tested, as well as providing further feedback about usability. “I think we will know by the evening of the 15th whether people think it is good, bad or indifferent,” Moss said.

One hundred of the volunteers come from CfH, the other 500 from the NHS in Scotland and England. Volunteers will be put into a special ‘organisation’ on the platform for the trial. They will rejoin their own organisations as they come up for migration in the spring.

CfH says there has been a big pick up in the number of people registering for an NHSmail account over the past three months, with 9,000 registering in September, 12,000 in October and just over 11,000 in November. Moss said he thought the impending move to Microsoft Exchange was behind the increase in registrations.

The new platform promises to deliver a better email service, but also to improve access to task lists, calendars and other functions. It will also support a better service for the users of mobile devices.

Lyn Whitfield

Readers Comments

Good News!

13 Dec 08 18:32

That is very good news, but are there any plans to link as a 'trusted status' with other large Exchange/AD domains, some of which have over 60,000 users in a modern converged environment? If not, why not?

Wow!

15 Dec 08 16:59

"Extensive user acceptance testing" and Connecting for Health in the same sentence - excellent!

Bad luck if not I Explorer

16 Dec 08 09:09

it would be even better if they had chosen a system that doesn't throttle itself if you try to use anything except Internet Explorer.

This means that those of us that choose to use non-Microsoft operating systems or software are treated as second class citizens.

As for the rising number of users. I doubt that this is due to enthusiasm. It's more likely due to the compulsion to change that many trusts are imposing.

Not a citizen

16 Dec 08 12:48

Lets be honest, you are a staff member, not a citizen. Very few organisations permit their staff to chose their own applications.

The current NHS standard is for Microsoft IE, hence that's what NHSMail supports.

Already testing the IMAP link

17 Dec 08 09:12

I've been using Outlook 2003 and SynQ to read NHS mail for 2 years now.

I've been asked to report failures in the IMAP link to Cable & Wireless for the last few months since it became so unbelievably unreliable. It's not just a failure with synchronisation ; but the fact that Outlook freezes and is non-recoverable when this happens requiring a 3-finger salute or even a total power off via the PC on/off button (the 4 second crash routine)

However these requests for 'volunteers' never came my way - pre-selection of a cohort test group?

Mr Suspicious

(Post edited by EHIPC)

Firfox works just fine

17 Dec 08 09:16

I use Firefox to read NHS mail on the web and it works just dandy. (Thats when Outlook SynQ fails IMAP connectivity.

I exclusively use Firefox at home and its faster to read NHS mail than access from the NHS workplace.

Stop complaining

17 Dec 08 09:36

I get the sense that there are some folks on this board that are determined to find something bad to say, even when the news is good. NHSmail is using MS products - they might not be the best or most popular with techies, but they are making best value of contracts the NHS already has with MS (contracts not set up by NHSmail) so they're trying to save the NHS money. I understand that the increase in numbers is from people self-registering, i.e. choosing to go and get an account, not from IT depts forcing them to. Isn't it just possible that people like the way they can access their email from anywhere and think that's a good thing?! Yes, I use it - the web interface is a bit clunky, so I'm looking forward to that being fixed, but generally it's a good service. And to the person that asked about linking to other Exchange domains - if your local domain can satisfy the same scurity requirements (i.e. is classifed by Government as a 'restricted' service and has twin resilient, list X accredited data centres etc.) then yes, I'm sure it's possibel to link to it!

Stop complaining

17 Dec 08 09:51

Non-MS products and NHS Mail

grant.forrest@nhs.net

17 Dec 08 12:34

When there is a good story about NHS mail on EHI, there are always comments along the lines of "It ain't as good as Google Mail" etc. Leaving the recent IMAP performance issues aside, I think the service has improved gradually and let's hope the migration sees that trend continue. I have been told that third party mail clients and browsers e.g. Thunderbird & Firefox will be supported on the new platform, which is good news for the less MS-philic amongst us. If this turns out not to be the case, then we must complain as bitterly as we can to MS, not to our employers. Interestingly, MS's response to the initial launch of Google's Chrome web browser was 24 carat gold indifference, preferring to highlight all the things that are "fixed" in IE8.

Not a disgruntled techie

17 Dec 08 20:40

As the poster of the original grouch let me point out that I am not a disgruntled, MS-phobic techie, but a GP who needs to access both email and diaries in a number of settings, not all of which in the NHS.

I happily use IE at work but have linux/firefox on my laptop and a Mac at home.

Outlook Web Access Light will not allow: Mail search, reminders,HTML message composition (OK not a great loss), flags,categories, weekly view in calendar,full meeting functionality, spell check, account quota (vital with the limited message space available) and Print (!!!).

The effect will be that I will be unable to use full NHS mail functionality unless I am sitting at my desk in my surgery. As a result I will be forced to look at other solutions outside NHS mail.

NHS Mail

18 Dec 08 13:22

All these comments about the technical platform and compatibilities are interesting but we are not addressing the key governance shortcomings of NHSMail. NHS Mail is based on personal email accounts, which will move with the individual as they move through organisations in the NHS. When you are employed by an organisation the data in your email account belongs to that organisation and not the individual and it is not appropriate for that individual to take this data with them into other legal organisations (which may well include person identifiable and sensitive information given the stance taken by CFH and the BMA). There are also concerns on how data can be safely archived to meet needs of the responsible organisations and there still seems significant scope for staff registering with "different" identities.

Unfortunately when these issues are raised with CFH the response just seems to be that these are local management issues. If that is the case then it is a local management decision on whether to use a system which is not fit for purpose.

Connectivity with alternative email products

roseneath@ntlworld.com

22 Dec 08 22:50

I believe this is possible with NHS mail. I am trying to get warning messages sent from a Linux server to my NHSmail email account and then forwarded by sms to my mobile phone. I am running Exim on the server with local relaying only and forwarding to the smtp server for NHSmail. Then it should forward wherever you want. Exim is a bit of a beast with the manual alone going to 460 odd pages, but it has a config script to make life easier. The biggest issue is that I have had to create a personal email account, when what I really wanted was a surgery one. Still I am sure I can tidy things up with a few forwarding rules and filters.

NHS Mail

dan@fishms.org

29 Dec 08 18:35

to roseneath@ntlworld.com

1) I'm assuming you are NOT using monit for the server monitoring on the linux server - if you did use it you can do away with exim as it will send email warnings direct 2) You can get a surgery email address - give the helpline a call and they'll set it up 3) Good idea re forwarding rules and sms etc. I must give it a try.

On the whole I find the idea of a move to Exchange is a backwards one.

Monit

roseneath@ntlworld.com

02 Jan 09 11:55

Monit sounds interesting. I'll have a look at that, thank you.