Cambridge produces all US shortlist

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have come up with an all-US shortlist of suppliers for their high profile electronic patient record procurement.

Cerner, Epic and Allscripts have been shortlisted from a long list of 16 suppliers. EHealth Insider understands that an initial short-listing round produced a different result, but a decision was then taken to re-run the short-listing process.

A letter to that was sent to suppliers after the initial shortlisting said the trust had found it "difficult to reach a consensus" and had therefore decided to "introduce a short additional process.”

Suppliers were called back at short notice to go through a new evaluation process. The second time around, there was a significant re-weighting of the scoring of suppliers.

There were some 53 responses to the joint Cambridge procurement, seen as a possible litmus test for how the NHS IT market will develop post- the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

The large number of responses reflected the nature of the tender, which was split into two lots - for infrastructure and hardware and for software.

The remaining companies for the first lot (hardware and infrastructure) are: Accenture, McKesson and System C bidding as a consortium; BT; and Hewlett Packard.

The remaining three companies for the second lot (software) are: Allscripts, Cerner and Epic.

EHI sources said that InterSystems was also in the mix, bidding its TrakCare product, which is currently being installed in parts of Scotland. But the trust said this was not the case.

US supplier Epic is well regarded in the US, but it has no UK reference sites. However, Epic is known to have heavily invested in the Cambridge procurement and is thought to be well regarded by senior clinicians at the trust.

Allscripts is another major US supplier. Cerner was expected to be in the mix, given its involvement with the National Programme for IT in the NHS and wins at big trusts that have gone outside it.

Cambridge has jointly tendered with Papworth to take forward an ‘eHospital programme’. The procurement is driven primarily by Cambridge.

The plan is for a new EPR system and associated infrastructure to be implemented in time for Papworth to move onto the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in 2015.

Carrie Armitage, eHospital programme director at Cambridge University Hospitals, said in a statement: “Cross-hospital working between the two trusts is already common, and is likely to increase after Papworth move to join us on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

"It makes sense for us to work together to create a comprehensive electronic patient record.”

Keith Swinburne, new Papworth Hospital technical manager, and eHospital programme director, Papworth Hospital, said: “Any approach which delivers a radical transformation of the productivity of the NHS is going to have information technology at its heart.

"A future where computers are part and parcel of everyday work for everyone will make our healthcare more efficient, effective, safe and reliable. We aim to improve patient care and to save money.”

Both trusts currently run legacy iSoft patient administration systems. Papworth took iPM as an 'interim' system from NPfIT, while Cambridge stuck with its existing system.

The two trusts expect to make a decision on the preferred bidders in 2012.

EHealth Insider asked the trust to confirm the shortlist, but it was unable to do this before the publication of the first version of this story on Friday, 2 December. This story has been updated in response to information from the trust.