Scottish PMS deal may go national

NHS National Services Scotland is to make a decision on whether the recently announced Patient Management System contract should be widened to become a national system to cover all NHS boards in Scotland.

NHS NSS, which procures IT software on behalf on Scotland’s 14 health boards and eight special health boards, selected InterSystems as its preferred bidder in November 2009.

The decision means that InterSystems will provide its TrakCare product to five health boards including NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Borders and NHS Grampian.

However, Richard Copland, director of health information and technology at Greater Glasgow and Clyde told E-Health Insider that the contract, which is likely to be formally signed on Friday, may contain provisions for a national licence to be purchased for other boards to call off contracts.

Copland said: “All being equal we are tying the last elements together around the terms and conditions and are dealing with queries around timing and functionality. We are also tying down the commercials and finalising ideas around the potential for a national system rather than a consortium licence.”

NHS NSS selected InterSystems as its preferred bidder after placing an advertisement in the Official Journal European Union in April 2008 for a supplier to come forward to bid for a patient management system framework contract.

In January 2009, Atos Origin with System C’s Medway Sigma product, Perot with Oasis and InterSystems with Trakcare were shortlisted, following an expression of interest by 73 companies.

InterSystems will provide a web-based healthcare information system and core administrative functions of a PMS.

These functions include general hospitals patient administration including mental health patient administration, complex scheduling and order communications functionality including results reporting.

Optional modules include A&E, clinical support tools, hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration, pharmacy management, maternity, mental health clinical, neonatal and theatres.

Initially, the five consortium health boards will place call off contracts to the value of £44m; but the contract could be worth more if it becomes the national PMS system.

Last year, Mark Salveta, head of business advisory group at NHS NSS told EHI that roll-out would start at the beginning of 2010.

However, Copland said that it would be pushed back. “We have collectively decided to set up a Scottish foundation system where we will look at elements of the system which are common to all boards and will be sitting down with InterSystems to discuss that.

“Work will start on the real deployment getting things up and running towards the back end of 2010.”

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