10.09.14
NHS Spine ‘successfully rebuilt’ – HSCIC
The NHS Spine system has been “successfully rebuilt”, with more than a dozen national IT systems and services migrated to the new platform in the space of a weekend, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).
Following months of planning, testing and development, the new Spine 2 – built in-house by the HSCIC in collaboration with agile software specialists BJSS – has been developed because it was time to review and update the service in line with “latest policy and new technology”.
During the last two years, the NHS has been rebuilding the Spine, which was developed just over a decade ago as part of the troubled NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), to use open-source software.
The NHS Spine, described as the electronic backbone of the NHS, handles approximately 400 million electronic messages a month and more than 2.6 billion information requests and amendments each year. Spine services and systems are available 24/7 and on average 99.97% of the time.
Andy Williams, HSCIC chief executive, said: “We have harnessed the latest technology to rebuild the most important NHS electronic system, built over 10 years ago and today relied upon by hundreds of thousands of health staff and patients every single day.
“Rebuilding such a massive and integral system was a huge challenge, not least in ensuring more than 20,000 organisations and the many thousands of people who rely on the system were able to continue accessing the Spine during the transition with minimal disruption. I am delighted that the HSCIC, supported by the commitment of several other organisations, has achieved this.”
HSCIC director of operations and assurance services Rob Shaw added that the organisations carefully planned a phased approach to move to the new system, in order to minimise disruption over the transition weekend and ensure patient care was delivered throughout.
“We avoided a ‘switch off switch on’ approach, which would have led to a complete gap in critical NHS services like out-of-hours care, several ambulance services and NHS 111,” he added.
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