Microsoft Office 365 rollout across primary care
Date posted: 1st October 2020All GP practices across Lancashire and South Cumbria are in the process of having their digital technology upgraded from their current Microsoft Office 2010 package to the newer Microsoft Office 365 (O365) version.
The current version of the software, Office 2010, will no longer be supported by Microsoft from October 2020, which can create a cyber-risk to practices as time moves on without security upgrades. This upgrade to O365 addresses any security vulnerabilities that may arise when Microsoft ceases this support. The scale of this programme is significant, with approximately 7,000 accounts needing to be upgraded in a short period of time.
The project is being run by the ICS Digital team, who are in the process of identifying immediate and long-term training needs and the intention will be to support practices with appropriate training at the right time.
In addition to addressing the security vulnerabilities, the O365 package will provide new functionality that will benefit all practices.
This includes:
- access to the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook)
- a host of new cloud-based collaborative tools, including Microsoft Teams for holding video calls with patients and colleagues
- OneDrive for personal data storage
- other O365 business tools (Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Streams, Office mobile apps)
- full integration with the national NHSmail email service, once its upcoming move to O365 (Exchange Online) is complete.
Rollout plans for each Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area are being prepared, with work in the Fylde Coast and Morecambe Bay underway already, and the project team is working with the CCG communication teams in each Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) to coordinate local updates to practices.
If you have any queries about this programme of work, please contact your local IT Department.
Training sessions
Our series of Microsoft Teams training sessions have now been expanded to incorporate key elements of Office 365. The sessions will outline the main differences in the current MS Office setup to the new cloud based, collaborative 365.
The sessions will outline the key differences between the current version and 365 for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note and Outlook, and will also begin to take a look at apps within Teams. The sessions are running every Tuesday and Thursday at 10am up until 22 October 2020.