All hospitals and GPs to be connected to fibre optic broadband, Hancock says
- 1 May 2019
All hospitals and GP practices will soon have access to the fastest fibre optic broadband under new government plans.
Announcing the plans on 30 April, the secretary of state for health and social care, Matt Hancock, said the upgrade would support a promise made in the NHS Long Term Plan to improve the range and access of digital healthcare services.
Existing plans state 70% of NHS organisations are expected to have full fibre connectivity by August 2020. The new plans will see it rolled out to every hospital, GP and community care service, but no completion date has been set.
Currently about 40% of NHS organisations are using slow and unreliable internet supplied through copper lines, restricting their ability to offer digital services, such video consultations, as the outdated technology cannot cope with the speed required.
Hancock said: “It’s simply unbelievable that a third of NHS organisations are using internet that can sometimes be little better than dial-up.
“To give people control over how they access NHS services, I want to unlock the full potential of technology – this is the future for our 21st century healthcare system and a central part of our NHS Long Term Plan.
“Faster broadband connections can help us deliver these dramatic improvements – we need clinicians and other healthcare professionals to feel confident they can access fast, reliable broadband so they can provide patients with the best possible care.”
The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January, included a chapter solely on digital technology which details aims for the coming years.
It states that, in 10 years’ time, the “NHS [in England] will offer a ‘digital first’ option for most, allowing for longer and richer face-to-face consultations with clinicians where patients want or need it”.
Following the plans publication a number of healthcare leaders and suppliers welcomed the “ambitious” targets but also questioned whether it could all be done in the tight timeframes given.
7 Comments
5G is around the corner, why invest in fixed and costly fiber grid while everything (in term of medical devices, portable devices, and EMR) is been manufactured to be used on the move?
And what will superfast ANYTHING achieve without an standard methodology (process es) for its effective use. If you leave GPs to ‘fire at will’. it will achieve little of any use.
Thank you for that comment Myrkur and giving us a name, I like leaders who talk and do not remain anonymous, the directive from MH is + and should be fully supported, IT is critical !!!
push the moaning minnies to one side, that is great news, one huge step forward, deliver IT NHS and if you can not then you should hand IT over to those who can !
What planet is he on ?
The devil is in the detail. Is the promise for fibre connections to premises, expensive, or fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), which still uses the standard phone line?
Another promise made with impossible delivery targets! Laying fibre to remote locations, with the resulting way leaves and a TELCOs inability to deliver in reasonable timescales will leave a lot of remote GP practices still struggling to connect to any form of Internet, let alone faster broadband!
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