NHS England say that retiring these cards is necessary because they do not support an improved level of security for signing electronic prescriptions and they rely on Gemalto software to function, which is known to cause issues for some organisations. Practices now need to:
- Identify anyone using one of the affected smartcards and order a replacement. More details on how to identify these cards and the retirement process as a whole is on the NHS Digital website.
- Ensure that they have the Oberthur software installed on their devices.