News
NHS Digital partners with Egress to support the UK’s secure healthcare communications network
March 2020 by Marc Jacob
Egress has today announced that its Egress Protect solution will be integrated into NHSmail to offer enhanced protection and improve user experience. NHSmail is used by up to 1.5m healthcare staff daily and is the largest closed secure email network in the UK. Today’s announcement comes as part of NHS Digital’s commitment to use innovative technology to transform the UK healthcare landscape.
Effective communication is an integral part of the NHS, and Egress’ email encryption technology has a significant footprint in UK Government.
NHSmail is a secure email service, approved by the Department of Health and Social Care, for sharing sensitive information. NHSmail has a function for sending sensitive emails which are encrypted, to non-secure email addresses.
Egress Protect improves healthcare practitioners’ experience by enabling them to use NHSmail to send encrypted emails to unsecure domains, including patients and other areas of the health and care system, as well as offering automatic decryption for inbound email. This allows those recipients of NHSmail emails that are encrypted using Egress Protect to read and reply free of charge via an easy-to-use online portal or using Egress’ free app for Outlook integration.
Consequently, secure email communication is available free of charge and in a simple and accessible way, to everyone who needs it. Egress Protect is already used by many local government organisations and major private healthcare providers in the UK and will streamline communications between these organisations and the NHS. Following an initial pilot phase, Egress is now the new provider for sending sensitive emails from NHSmail accounts encrypted to external email accounts.
