North London trusts outsource IT to 2e2

Three NHS trusts in Camden and Islington have awarded a five year managed ICT service contract to systems integrator, 2e2.

The company will implement remote and site based managed services across NHS Islington, NHS Camden, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust to reduce costs and provide support for critical systems for staff and patients.

Before the contract, the trusts had a shared service, which was managed in house. However, it failed to deliver the expected benefits because of a lack of investment.

A decision was made to outsource the ICT managed service. The trusts went out to tender and 2e2 emerged as the preferred bidder for all of the trusts, who signed separate contracts with the company at the end of 2009.

David Thomas, head of ICT at NHS Islington said: “We faced a unique challenge in that we are three separate entities requiring three streams of work to be delivered: network, server and desktop management.

“We acknowledged the complexity that a multiple service provider solution would bring and felt that 2e2 had the skills and capacity to manage all workloads.”

2e2 has already put in place a programme manager and a service transition team to address infrastructure remediation and transformation.

Recommendations include changing the trusts' Exchange email platform and accepting a roadmap to get the most out of their existing assets.

Thomas added: "The roadmap means they tell us what they think we should be investing in, but we have an overall say as to whether we take that onboard and whether we go to another vendor.

"One thing they have recommended is the virtualisation of all our servers. We're also looking at remote working and investigating smart working."

The trusts will officially review the work being done by 2e2 every six months, using agreed metrics for success to ensure that the trust can measure the value of the program and ensure that service levels are improved before the next phase begins.

Thomas said: "The new contract has provided us with a knowledge and skills base that we just couldn't provide ourselves." 

Nathan Marke, chief technical officer for 2e2, said: “Users at Camden and Islington trusts will benefit from prompt and efficient logging and management of incidents and service requests and the routine proactive maintaince will significantly reduce down time.”

Link: 2e2