Exploring the use of Secured Accredited Mail and NHSmail in the Social Care Sector

Description

Please see full tender and expression of interest form in the attachments.

Project objectives
1. Business Case

Adult Social Care organisations must be able to share information with and receive information from the National Health Service to plan, monitor and administer care. This includes Personal Identifiable Information relating to a service user.
The Health and Care Act 2012 s250 (1) states that 'The Secretary of State or [NHS England] may prepare and publish an information standard.' In practice this standard is set by the NHS and the information standards cover:
• technical - such as relating to messaging
• data - defining the structure and type of information to be recorded and submitted as a data set or a clinical terminology code set for example
• information governance - relating to policies, procedures or guidelines on information processing for example

The NHS' Data Alliance Partnership Board (DAPB) assures the quality of information standards. Their standard for e-mail communication is DCB1596.

Adult Social Care organisations must select one of two methods to comply with these standards:

Implement an already compliant service such as NHSmail, Office 365 or Google Workspace for all staff at your organisation.
Demonstrate your own service is compliant with the secure email standard by following the secure email accreditation process.


The Better Security, Better Care programme receives frequent communications from social care organisation directly and through our partner agencies - our 28 Local Support Organisations - about the ease of use of each option with a high level of frustration shown.

We seek to understand:

1) What e-mail solutions are currently being used by the sector? This might include non-secure e-mail solutions either used as the only service or used in conjunction with a secure option for communication with certain organisations.

2) What are the risks, benefits, concerns or frustrations of using each option from a provider's perspective and from a security perspective? This needs to be derived from desktop research and through speaking with a diverse number of social care organisations ranging in size, care type and setting.

3) Which of the secure e-mail options currently available is a best fit for the sector in terms of ease of access and ease of use? There may be more than one answer and that different types of organisation best fit with different options.

4) Recommendations on the usage of different e-mail domains and each one's impact on operability with other NHS systems (such as proxy ordering of medications, GPConnect or access to funding for Digital Social Care Records through the DiSC programme).

5) Recommendations on improvements to existing options for secure mail in terms of access, support and implementation.

6) Recommendations on alternative options for secure mail in the adult social care market.

Additional information

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Follow Up

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