Providing a full range of services for local residents, as well as offering specialist care for patients from further afield, staff at London-based Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust have more than two million patient contacts every year. As such, medical professionals at the trust are routinely required to share highly confidential patient information with a network of health specialists in order to provide the highest levels of care. While secure communication can be facilitated by NHSmail and NHS SFTP for large file transfer, these services are generally only available for NHS employees.
The challenge
Elidon Beqiri, Information Security Manager for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, states: “The NHS currently uses NHSmail as the main way of securing confidential patient information shared via email between NHS organisations. However, the service is not available to most non-NHS bodies, such as private healthcare providers, private sector supply chain organisations, and education and research establishments, as well as NHS patients.”
“Using Egress Protect, our staff can now securely share a variety of information simply and efficiently. Consequently, they can focus on the real task in hand: providing the highest quality care and medical service for our patients.”
Elidon Beqiri, Information Security Manager, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
The solution
Market-leading email and file encryption service Egress Protect enables organisations to secure and control the information they share with external third parties, and is the only UK government-certified email encryption product for sharing IL2 and low-threat IL3 data. Designed to integrate with NHSmail and other government secure networks, such as GSX and CJSM, Egress Protect enables messages to be split based upon recipient domains, meaning users no longer have to send separate emails to secure and non-secure recipients. In addition, Egress Protect’s large file transfer functionality enables users to securely share information regardless of file size.
“Secure large file transfer was of particular importance to the trust when selecting a data security solution,” explains Beqiri. “As part of the academic health sciences centre King’s Health Partners, Guy’s and St Thomas’ is a pioneer in health research and a leading provider of medical education, which means we need to be able to share large amounts of data securely.”
Combining flexible storage options, including on-premise and Cloud hosting with sophisticated file encryption, Egress Protect offers a simple ‘one click’ large file transfer solution. Recipients are notified automatically once the files have been uploaded, and complete visibility and control can be maintained at all times. “Using Egress Protect, our staff can now securely share a variety of information simply and efficiently,” concludes Beqiri. “Consequently, they can focus on the real task in hand: providing the highest quality care and medical service for our patients.”
A sector-wide issue
“The NHS currently uses NHSmail as the main way of securing confidential patient information shared via email between NHS organisations. However the service is not available to most non-NHS bodies, such as private healthcare providers, private sector supply chain organisations, and education and research establishments, as well as NHS patients.”
Commenting on the announcement, Egress VP Account Management Kelly McCann stated: “We are delighted that Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has chosen to secure their confidential patient information using Egress Protect. As a large NHS trust and a leading provider of medical research in the UK, Guy’s and St Thomas’ is committed to providing the highest quality of care, which extends to protecting the confidential patient information shared with third parties. Not only does Egress Protect offer a comprehensive solution to data security, with users able to share information securely via email and large file transfer, automated message routing bridges the gap between secure and unsecure networks. As such, Guy’s and St Thomas’ can have full confidence that confidential patient information can be shared securely, without detracting from the high standard of care they provide.”