NHS Digital and Credera achieve 90% of HSCN migrations, saving the NHS £75 million annually

Credera have worked alongside NHS Digital on the Health and Social Care Network migration. This is Europe’s largest Wide Area Network (WAN) migration, helping the NHS save millions of pounds.

What is HSCN?

The Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) is the newly created disaggregated, multi-supplier marketplace that provides choice to the UK's health and social care sites when selecting their network connection. This change was needed to address the increasing demand for connectivity and bandwidth improvements within the NHS, and replaces the single supplier N3 network that has been in place for circa 16 years.

The HSCN programme is one of enormous scale and ambition, and alongside setting up the marketplace, it is responsible for leading the procurement and replacement of 14,500 services for GPs, NHS Trusts and other sites across England.

What are the benefits?

It delivers increased choice and flexibility, as well as saves the NHS £75 million annually. Network services are, on average, 70% cheaper than they were on N3, enabling sites to upgrade to faster, more reliable fibre services at no additional cost.  

Why is it important? 

The speed and reliability these connections bring improves the NHS’s ability to share life-saving information quickly and correctly across different sites, as well as assisting with the NHS’s ongoing digital transformation journey. 

The increased bandwidth and reliability provided by HSCN aids online interactions between patients and clinicians, allows sites to increasingly adopt digital services , and improves the sharing of expertise between care providers. Having a more powerful digital network is critical for the NHS, especially during times where face-to-face interactions are increasingly replaced by digital interactions. 

How did Credera help?

As their chosen migration partner, Credera worked closely alongside NHS Digital to deliver these results. We fulfilled key roles to provide management, technical guidance and troubleshooting support directly to customers and suppliers, ensuring quick resolutions to a range of different issues.

Working in partnership with NHS Digital as one integrated and committed migration team has been key to the success of the project, enabling a smooth and timely transition.

This project has been fundamental in improving connectivity within the NHS, and Credera is proud to have played an integral role in helping them achieve this goal.