The Department of Health is currently developing it’s Interoperability Toolkit (IKT). Following a call for suggestions of themes that should be added to the Toolkit they are now available to view and it’s great to see that one of the potential themes addded is to deliver secure, open access to the Internet at any NHS site.
The aim of this theme would be to
Provide “free” internet access for workers / visitors involved in academia / research, enabling access to relevant information sources to support users whilst on an NHS site (and vice versa).
and would support this scenario:
Whilst visiting an NHS Trust, an academic data consumer requires internet access to retrieve information concerning research and education. He is enrolled to eduroam at is home University and fortunately, the university he is visiting is also an eduroam site. As a consequence, he has automatic access to the internet at the site he is visiting. His access is authenticated through his home site. It would be useful if similar access could be made available when visiting an NHS Trust.
Eduroam is used across many academic sites internationally and this the proposal would be to extend Eduroam to include NHS Trusts. The proposal has been supported by cases studies prepared by the NHS-HE Forum IT connectivity best practice working group, which I’m a member of.
The NHS are now inviting individuals to vote for the 5 themes they think will deliver the grestest benefits. Voting is open until close of business on 27 February. If you work in medical education or research in the NHS then you might want to vote for this as a priority.
NOTE – eduroam is towards the bottom of the list in Technology Enhancements described as “ Deliver secure, open access to the internet at any NHS site”