Overview
NHS 24, one of Scotland’s seven special health boards, is responsible for delivering digital health and care services, including GP.Scot. It supports websites for 132 GP surgeries across Scotland, many of which faced challenges with security, availability, performance, and the distribution of national medical advisory content.
The Challenge
NHS 24 needed to find a way to streamline its complex digital estate across 132 GP practices by consolidating to a single, enterprise grade CMS that would improve consistency, drive efficiencies and improve both security and availability. This would not only enhance their internal processes but also significantly help with their patient experiences and outcomes.
The Solution
To address these issues, NHS 24 partnered with Forrit to migrate all 132 websites to the Forrit CMS in a highly efficient and streamlined process.
Since going live, the migration has delivered immediate improvements in website security, performance, and availability—ensuring that critical medical information and services remain reliably accessible.
Over the longer term, this will help improve patient outcomes and is expected to reduce pressure on both GP practices and A&E departments.
Results that Speak for themselves
The migration to Forrit CMS has delivered measurable uptrends in website security, performance, and availability across all 132 GP websites. This ensures that critical medical advice and services are consistently available.
Looking ahead, the improved accessibility of information and services is expected to enhance patient outcomes and reduce unnecessary visits to both GP surgeries and emergency departments.
Through Forrit’s CMS, GP.Scot and its network of GP websites benefit from:
- Enhanced security: Built on Microsoft Azure, the platform leverages certain cloud features to ensure data confidentiality and provide comprehensive protection against cyber threats, including DDoS attacks and common vulnerabilities.
- Improved performance: Automated deployments and load balancing deliver fast, reliable access to services at scale, ensuring websites remain responsive under high demand.
- Operational efficiency: A centralised Service Delivery Hub allows NHS administrators to manage all websites from a single dashboard. This reduces costs, improves efficiency, and provides a transparent audit trail of content changes—eliminating the inefficiencies of manual or email-based approval processes.
- Creative freedom: Marketing teams can create, edit, and manage content across devices and languages with intuitive low-code/no-code tools, while maintaining brand consistency, compliance, and enterprise-level approval processes.
Voice of the customer:
"This innovation is enabling Digital Transformation and supporting the Digital Front Door for patients across Scotland"
Jonathan Cameron, Deputy Director - Digital Health and Care at The Scottish Government