The future of Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi roaming for the NHS and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) an independent study

The Future Connectivity Programme’s Connectivity Hub produces, sources and shares expert technical knowledge to support the NHS to plan and implement the right connectivity for local needs.

To target and prioritise the right blend of system knowledge and expert independent advice, we engage with health and care organisations, directly and through surveys, to understand their connectivity challenges and procure and publish externally independent commissioned reports into priority topics.

This report was produced following the selection of a supplier via an open tender procurement process run according to PCR2015 during 2024. Under the terms of the contract between NHS England and the supplier in question, the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the report and any associated material sits solely with NHS England who reserve the right to adapt and amend the published version of the report.

These web pages have been adapted from the full report, which can be found on the Future Connectivity FutureNHS workspace at AWTG NHS Consultancy Report: The Future of Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Roaming for the NHS and ICS Organisations.

This guidance was reviewed and updated in February 2025. Any reference made to policies, standards and regulations were believed accurate at the time of writing. It is the responsibility of the reader to check that any application of this guidance conforms to the latest relevant regulatory standards, policies and requirements.

Any enquiries on the content of the report should be directed to the NHS England Future Connectivity Programme: [email protected].

The following content is taken from an independent report into Wi-Fi roaming in the NHS, commissioned by the Future Connectivity Programme and produced by AWTG Ltd.

The content is 'supplier agnostic' which means we do not endorse any specific companies, innovations, or approaches. Any mention of, or link to, a specific supplier or product is not an endorsement from the Connectivity Hub or NHS England and is for illustrative purposes only.

For clarity any recommendations made in this report are those of the report author and do not necessarily represent an endorsement, policy, or requirement from NHS England.

The purpose of this report is to describe the benefits of Wi-Fi roaming to encourage NHS and Integrated Care Board (ICB) partner organisations to provide a Wi-Fi roaming solution in their settings if they have not already done so.

For those NHS and ICB partner organisations that have implemented a Wi-Fi roaming Solution, the report looks ahead to the future of Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi roaming to enable trusts and ICBs to plan future investments.

ICBs replaced Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and took on many of the responsibilities that CCGs used to have. ICBs also carry out several functions that were previously carried out nationally by NHS England. They facilitate integration between local NHS organisations in their area.

There is an ICB within each Integrated Care System (ICS), which has responsibility for commissioning most NHS services on behalf of the ICS. NHS England » What are integrated care systems?

For the purpose of this report, Wi-Fi roaming is defined as follows:

“Providing generic internet access to end user devices or Internet of Things (IoT) devices which are not in their usual corporate Wi-Fi network location but are in a Wi-Fi network location owned/managed by another publicly funded NHS/ICB partner.”

The report identifies the Wi-Fi roaming solutions currently in use across the NHS and compares them against a range of functional and non-functional criteria to draw out differences in features and functions.

The report describes the technical roadmap for Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi roaming over the next 2 to 5 years. This covers Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7, Passpoint and OpenRoaming.

The report summarises the product roadmaps of the two most widely used Wi-Fi roaming solutions, at the time of writing, and it describes if and how the suppliers of those two solutions are planning to implement Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7, Passpoint and OpenRoaming.

The report describes how NHS and ICB partners implement the two most widely used Wi-Fi roaming solutions including the organisational as well as the technical requirements.

The report concludes by assessing the funding models/approaches that could potentially be adopted for wide scale roll out of Wi-Fi roaming individually, across NHS trusts/ICBs and at a national level across England.

The report does not seek to recommend one Wi-Fi roaming solution over another. Its purpose is to provide the reader with the information needed to make an informed decision when choosing a solution to implement.

At the time of writing the NHS consisted of:

• 42 ICBs that operate across England
• 219 trusts, including 10 ambulance trusts that operate across England
• 2,858 sites, 1.3 million employees (head count) and 25 million m² total occupied floor area

On an average day in the NHS:

• more than 1 million people will attend a GP appointment
• more than 250,000 people will attend an outpatient appointment
• more than 30,000 people will call 999
• nearly 45,000 people will attend a major A&E department
• around 20 per cent of A&E patients will be admitted into hospital.
• around 750 patients will go into critical care

Source: The King’s Fund and NHS Workforce Statistics

To provide these services efficiently and effectively, it is essential that people and organisations have access to the information and systems that they need to do their job from as many health and care settings as possible. Wi-Fi roaming solutions enable this to happen by providing internet access to end user devices which are not in their usual setting but are in a setting owned or managed by another ICB partner.

The risk of failing to provide an NHS and ICB wide Wi-Fi roaming solution is that service delivery models remain locked into old inefficient bureaucratic systems, it will not be possible to deliver modern technology enabled services that deliver better outcomes for patients, and the burden of managing complex interactions and data flows between NHS and ICB partners will remain with patients.

NHS transformation and the realisation of the benefits this delivers can only be realised if health and care professionals are able to access the applications and data that they need to do their job when they are working at most or all ICB partner settings. Each ICB is advised to implement a common Wi-Fi roaming solution across all member organisations in order to benefit from the interoperability and economies of scale savings that convergence brings.

This report is vendor neutral. It assesses the most common solutions known to be employed in the NHS today and analyses in detail the two most widely used solutions, GovWifi and govroam, to help ICBs make an informed decision when choosing between them.

For example, govroam which is supplied by Jisc (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/about-us), has the most robust product roadmap. Jisc is currently testing a 4G/5G mobile plug and play unit named ‘edubox’ that could be used to provide Wi-Fi roaming connectivity when healthcare is delivered at the point of need and in settings without a corporate grade local area network (LAN) (this is currently a prerequisite of Wi-Fi roaming). As of March 2023,  several hospitals were engaged in the edubox proof of concept project and a govroam version was being considered.

Finally, this report has identified that the interoperability and economies of scale benefits that can be realised by individual ICBs can be enjoyed at a much greater scale at a national level. Therefore, NHS England may wish to consider the case for selecting GovWifi or govroam as a national standard.