NHS England has announced that it has decommissioned all its physical data centres, following the transition of NHS Spine to cloud-based operations.

As reported by Digital Health News, the decommissioning process was completed shortly before Christmas 2023. The move to cloud computing for NHS Spine, which was completed at the end of last year, aims to establish a more secure, flexible, and sustainable technological infrastructure for England’s health and care system.

NHS Spine is a critical component of the NHS’ digital framework, enabling secure information sharing across national services, including the Electronic Prescription Service, the Personal Demographics Service, the Summary Care Record, and the e-Referral Service.

It has experienced a significant growth in transaction volumes over the last few years, now processing over 1.3 billion messages monthly.

In December, NHSE told Digital Health News that it is “now working to optimise existing services by making use of native cloud services and reducing dependencies between parts of Spine to make it easier to upgrade and further reduce running costs and expand internet access for all our users.”

The cloud migration is expected to facilitate better data integration across various care settings, enhance the speed of transactions, and offer scalable solutions to meet evolving needs.