A TOTAL of 1.6 million patients will benefit from faster treatment and diagnosis thanks to health professionals being able to quickly share critical patient information more rapidly.

This follows a new five-year multi-million pound contract with BT.

BT has struck a deal with East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust on behalf of NHS organisations in Sussex which will see the firm build and fully manage a new private, secure, communications network, connecting 390 NHS sites.

One of the many benefits of the new network is that IT applications commonly used by GPs to update patient records and print prescriptions will run faster and more reliably across a common platform.

The network will allow NHS and social care organisations to create their own dedicated virtual networks.

This will results in a closed community of health and social care professionals to access specific IT applications rapidly and exchange information securely.

Andy Bissenden, associate director of digital at East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “This will benefit the whole health economy by ensuring we enable the infrastructure to ensure we can provide better and timely information sharing across health and social care in Sussex and our boarding county’s organisations.”

Mark Sexton, BT’s regional director, said: “The NHS needed a scalable network that enabled the sharing of critical patient information across different local sites. “Clinicians will now be able to access and share information using the same, secure, cloud-based platform to meet the needs of the 1.6 million patients across Sussex.

“GPs and hospitals will be connected on the same communications infrastructure for the first time enabling faster patient diagnosis and treatment.”

BT will migrate the integrated communications network to the new Health and Social Care Network for the NHS. This will link the NHS with social care organisations for the first time.