NHS Scotland has confirmed a purchase of a single sign-on and password reset (SSO/PR) solution from Lexington, Mass.-based Imprivata. The financial terms of the deal were not revealed.

Imprivata will provide No Click Access to the many patient systems that run in hospitals and health communities across Scotland. The agreement was procured through value added reseller Trustmarque Solutions and will be facilitated via a partnership between Imprivata and leading ICT service and solution provider Northgate Managed Services, which will deliver and support Imprivata OneSign across all of Scotland’s NHS boards.

In support of its Better Health, Better Care initiative, a strategy and action plan established by the Scottish Government in 2007, NHS Scotland wanted to remove unnecessary cost, delays and better manage the workflow complexity associated with accessing electronic patient data. Building the best security was also a key priority to help protect the increasing volumes of sensitive information while allowing for maximum clinician-patient service improvement.

The NHS in Scotland has about 150,000 staff, including more than 63,000 nurses, midwives and health visitors and more than 8,500 doctors. There are also more than 7,000 practitioners, including GPs, dentists, opticians and community pharmacists who work as independent contractors.

After Northgate and Imprivata delivered a successful pilot ahead of schedule, NHS Scotland worked with Trustmarque to secure a countrywide agreement to include licenses for Imprivata’s OneSign, services, and five years of maintenance and support.

“NHS Scotland is committed to ensuring the highest levels of data security while enabling all employees to work as efficiently as possible to deliver high quality patient care,” said Ronnie Monaghan, head of e-Health Programme at NHS Fife. “Through a smart combination of healthcare and IT security expertise, Northgate Managed Services and Imprivata demonstrated the importance of understanding the complexities in patient and clinician workflow, ensuring that our patient data remains highly secure, and the need for maximizing the time available between patient and clinician.”

Monaghan added that since the appliance-based solution required no changes to existing infrastructure, “Imprivata OneSign can be seamlessly integrated with the existing IT systems at NHS Boards across Scotland.

This will prove significant for improving access and usage of key clinical systems for providing care on a national scale," he said.

“Imprivata is pleased to have been selected as a core technology for NHS Scotland’s ‘Better Health, Better Care’ program,” said Omar Hussain, president and CEO at Imprivata. “NHS Scotland is a highly regarded technology innovator that leads the way for healthcare initiatives in countries around the world.”