HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft Teams Is Now Free of Charge for the UK's NHS Workers

Microsoft Teams Is Now Free of Charge for the UK’s NHS Workers

NHS workers can now tap into Microsoft Teams free of charge to help them conduct virtual assessments, organize shifts, and offer symptom-checking bots.

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is continuing its goodwill by offering premium features to the UK's National Health Service (NHS) for free. The NHS is the largest healthcare provider in the world, but even it is seeing the stress of . In some cases, with dwindling tests and intensive care machinery, workers are having to choose between their health and their patients.

is fully committed to assisting the NHS at this incredibly challenging time. The use of Microsoft Teams will ensure the hardworking doctors, nurses and support staff across all NHS organisations have the tools they need to carry out their vital work,” said Cindy Rose, Microsoft UK CEO. “We are hugely appreciative of their ongoing efforts to tackle COVID-19 and will continue to provide support however best we can.”

Two weeks ago, Microsoft highlighted the features it's bringing to Teams to aid healthcare providers. They include the ability to conduct “virtual visits” with patients, a bot to aid assessments, and privacy and security measures.

All of these features and more will be available for free to the NHS for a limited time and should have now rolled out to all NHSmail users. However. it'll also be available to users who don't utilize NHSmail if they reach out directly to Microsoft.

“Technology is key to supporting patients who are self-isolating and makes sure they have the information they need and access to medical support and advice. For doctors and NHS staff this means that working remotely becomes much easier and more practical,” said Director of Technology at NHS Digital Ian Phoenix.

With bad actors attempting to spear-phish or malware infect vulnerable users, efforts like this do a lot to restore faith in humanity. Microsoft is already offering Microsoft Teams premium to enterprises for free while employees work from home and has had to scale down some Office 365 features as a result. It's also collecting a Covid-19 dataset, while an employee has been one of the first to test a vaccine. It'll be interesting to see what else the company does in the weeks ahead.

SourceNHS
Ryan Maskell
Ryan Maskellhttps://ryanmaskell.co.uk
Ryan has had a passion for gaming and technology since early childhood. Fusing the skills from his Creative Writing and Publishing degree with profound technical knowledge, he enjoys covering news about Microsoft. As an avid writer, he is also working on his debut novel.

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