Mirapoint wins contract to secure messaging services for UK health service

21 November 2006

Sunnyvale, Calif., USA. US company Mirapoint has been selected to provide the secure messaging infrastructure for NHSmail, an email and directory service provided for all National Health Service staff  by NHS Connecting for Health, the agency delivering the NHS National Programme for IT.

Cable & Wireless, Connecting for Health’s prime contractor, worked with Mirapoint to install this fully integrated and secure email, calendar and directory service for NHS staff. The deployment is the largest enterprise deployment of its kind in the world, with over 200,000 users to date.

The NHSmail service is a significant part of the NHS National Programme for IT, which aims to overhaul the NHS IT infrastructure in England to improve patient care and services (Scotland and Wales have independent IT programmes). NHSmail is provided to NHS staff throughout their careers within the NHS.

Following a competitive tender, Cable & Wireless chose to work with Mirapoint because of the ease of deployment and administration, ability to be re-branded and the innovative messaging and IT security technology that it offered. Additionally, Mirapoint offers the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership.

“For the NHSmail project, we needed a robust solution that would offer NHS staff an extremely easy to use and manage messaging service while addressing their security concerns,” commented Danny Reeves, head of delivery, Cable & Wireless UK. “Mirapoint’s flexible approach allowed us to tailor the messaging system to fit the NHS IT infrastructure exactly. Given the sensitive data circulating within the NHS, Mirapoint’s secure appliances and highly regarded anti-spam and anti-virus protection played a crucial part in our decision.”

The Mirapoint solution offers NHSmail users a secure messaging community whereby all mail in transit is encrypted, ensuring that the service is safe to use — particularly when sending confidential patient identifiable information between NHSmail users. It also guarantees that no data will go missing within the service, as back-up copies of all messages sent and received are kept automatically.

“The NHS Connecting for Health programme is a huge undertaking, which will have a significant impact on the delivery of health services in the UK. We are pleased to have been able to provide such a fundamental part of the new infrastructure,” said Barry Ariko, CEO of Mirapoint. “As the expert in secure messaging, we knew that our Message Server and RazorGate products would provide the exact messaging platform that the NHS required. We are confident that this new service will continue to provide NHS staff with the messaging environment needed to better serve patients across the UK.”

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