NHSmail on track for London

NHS Connecting for Health has said the migration of NHSmail to the Microsoft Exchange 2007 platform is going well as it prepares to move 50,000 NHS London accounts this weekend.

Will Moss, programme head of NHSmail, told E-Health Insider that four out of the migration’s 11 phases had been completed and that 122,565 live accounts from 54 organisations had been transferred.

He also reported a 99.95% success rate, meaning that 57 accounts had not been moved, probably because they were corrupted in some way.

“We have got another eight phases to go, and I am very confident we will repeat this success with those we have left,” he said.

Moss said the new platform was also stable. “We have just seen the two and a half millionth email sent since the migration started on 16 January, which suggests that people are using the new service well,” he said.

However, he acknowledged that some users had experienced problems with passwords. Exchange 2007 has more stringent password requirements than NHSmail’s former platform, and users have told EHI that they have been locked out of their accounts if they have failed to comply with them.

One user, who had been locked out of his account for three working days, said “the new platform is locking out so many accounts at once that the engineers simply can’t keep up” despite putting in substantial overtime.

Moss acknowledged that one trust had seen 500 accounts locked on a single day. However, he said this represented 4% of its user population, and that as of midday yesterday, 167 accounts were locked across the entire platform.

He also acknowledged that mobile device users might face particular difficulties, since some were set up to make repeated connection attempts, making a lock-out more likely. However, Moss argued that as users and local administrators got used to the new set up, the problems should diminish.

He also said the programme was looking at overcoming other glitches, such as the user guide only being accessible to those using the N3 network.

“I am confident we will finish the migration on time, even though next weekend is a humungous weekend, with 50,000 accounts from NHS London being transferred,” Moss added.

“I would also like to say how grateful I am to my team. By the end of March, some of them will have worked 135 days without a break, which is just heroic.”

The announcement that NHSmail would move from its Mirapoint platform to Exchange 2007 was made in July last year. Migration was initially due to start last autumn, but was delayed in September.

Around 300,000 live accounts are due to be migrated. CfH says that individual registrations have picked up in recent months, partly as a result of the better service that is being promised.