NHS Cloud policies and guidance

The Cloud and internet first approach that NHS and healthcare organisations provide is an enabler to create a solid foundation to NHS IT services that support the NHS Long term plan to be successfully implemented upon and delivering the NHS ambitions of:

• doing things differently:
• preventing illness and tackling health inequalities:
• backing our workforce:.
• making better use of data and digital technology:
• getting the most out of taxpayers’ investment in the NHS

Public Cloud 

By using public cloud for hosting of products and with internet first being the delivery method of communications within the NHS and healthcare organisations we can deliver on

• being more efficient and environmentally sustainable in the compute, storage and connectivity we use throughout the NHS and its providers
• being flexible and responsive to the demands of the NHS including winter pressures, pandemic responses and other future events
• reduce the risk of ageing IT hardware, private network infrastructure and hardware refresh cycles that currently provide key services locally and nationally
• being cost effective in the IT services the NHS and healthcare organisations consume, and operate efficiently
• allowing high availability of data and information when it is needed by increasing resilience within the NHS IT systems
• building an IT foundation that decrease delivery times and deployments of new products to the NHS workforce, citizens and patients that deliver value and save lives
• allowing NHS products to be built securely on a maintainable cyber secure focused platform using best practices, industry standards and accreditations

The Cloud and internet first 

The cloud and internet first approach means that public cloud and internet connectivity will be the default delivery model for NHS and healthcare organisations providing services for the NHS. When introducing new products or updating existing ones, NHS and healthcare organisations will need to consider the use of public cloud services first, before any other options.

While public cloud and internet services will be the appropriate choice in most cases, NHS and healthcare organisations should be enabled to evaluate alternatives in exceptional circumstances.

As technology rapidly changes NHS England will work with other NHS and healthcare organisations whom provide NHS services to support delivery of products and services.