EmailCwm Taf, which covers north Cardiff and some of the Welsh Valleys, has become the first NHS trust to move all its 7,000 staff across to the new service. This gives users access to a directory of contact details for all NHS Wales organisations, known as the National Active Directory, and ExChange, and an email address for the length of an individual's career with the health service.
The new directory and email will replace a "fragmented approach to logon security and email management", according to Informing Healthcare, which led the design of the core infrastructure in conjunction with Microsoft.
Informing Healthcare, the agency responsible for modernising health services in Wales, said that migration to the secure email service will continue into 2010 for most organisations.
"Implementations will continue at pace throughout the course of the next financial year, and will be supported by a dedicated project team," it said.
A framework of service management arrangements is being developed, including an organisational user group, formal change management and performance management processes. Overall development of the service will be overseen by a service board.
The email and directory is part of Informing Healthcare's £88m programme to use technology to improve health care. "Our focus has been on delivering tangible benefits for patients through small service improvement projects that allow us to adapt and learn from new ways of using or linking information," said Informing Healthcare's director Gwyn Thomas.
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