JANET(UK) is working with NHS Connecting for Health to implement an early adopter Gateway between JANET and the new broadband network for the NHS in England and Scotland called N3 and provided by BT.
This implementation follows the work of the N3 JANET Gateway Working Group . The Working Group has been superceded by a Project Board.
The N3 JANET Gateway became available for use by the early adopters in early November 2007.
The early adopters are so far:
- University of Newcastle in conjunction with their Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) partners in the North East of England (CETL4HealthNE)
- University of Bristol working with the University of West of England and the NHS Clinical Academies in Avon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire
The initial services are restricted to those that involve sessions initiated on the N3 network and not involving patient identifiable data ie:
- Fast and robust web access eg to support good access to Virtual Learning Environments
- Support for terminal services traffic eg to support Citrix or other "thin client" applications which are already in use in many areas to support staff and students at remote sites.
It is planned that the next service to follow will be IP based (h.323 protocol) videoconferencing so that HE sites can videoconference with NHS sites eg for teaching and meetings to the N3 JANET Gateway. This will be trialled by the University of Newcastle and their CETL4HealthNE partners in the first instance.
The N3 JANET Gateway early adopter is housed at BT's Kingston Exchange in London and links to JANET at Telecity. The early adopter contract is for 1 year.
An update on this project was given at the NHS-HE Forum on 21st November 2008 and also ideas being discussed for its development.
The NHS-HE CONNECTIVITY PROJECT