National Programme ‘Mobilises’ for Delivery

The shape of things to come on NHS IT started to become clearer during the course of Healthcare Computing with a series of key announcements made on how and when the NHS IT Programme is moving from its initial ‘mobilisation phase’ to focus on delivery, and the key personnel who will be responsible.

Five Local Service Provider Contracts

Richard Granger, NHS Director General of IT, announced the National NHS IT Programme – based on infrastructure, electronic records, e-booking and e-prescribing – will be delivered through five big contracts based around the Government Regional Offices in England.

London will be the first of the regions to move forward, one two ‘local service providers’ (LSPs) to be announced by October – the other likely to be Blackberd in the West Midlands or possibly the long-running South West joint procurement. The three remaining contracts will be let by the end of 2003.

Mr Granger said this timetable would result in ‘Meaningful deployments by the end of the calendar year.”

Mr Granger said that the decision to award a small number of LSP contracts – it had been thought the number would be 7-8 – was based on feedback from strategic health authority chief executives and chief information officers. The decision also reflects a determination to keep the procurement process short and manageable, while making contracts big enough to attract the top companies.

First National Application Contract by September

Though not mentioned by Mr Granger at Healthcare Computing E-Health Insider understands that the goal is to award the first National Application Service Provider (NASP) contract by the end of the year. This is likely to be for the revamped E-Booking programme, for which a long-list of suppliers have now been selected.

Implementation

David Kwo, chief information officer for London, which will be the first part of England to try the LSP approach, explained how he planned to manage implementation: “In London we have 12-15 health communities and these will be the units of implementation. We are starting with the old health authority boundaries.”

Programme Management Office Contract

In a separate announcement, first trailed by E-Health Insider last week, Mr Granger announced that the contract for the Programme Management Office (PMO) to oversee delivery of the National Programme has been awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root.

“Kellogg, Root and Brown are a good firm with a strong track record in the delivery of complex programmes to time and to budget,” said Mr Granger. KBR will deploy an initial team of 20 UK professionals by the end of this week.

KBR is an international engineering firm and part of Halliburton, the company headed for five years by US vice-president Dick Cheney. Earlier this month the company which runs was awarded contracts by the US Government to help rebuild Iraq once the shooting stops.

The initial £37m three-year PMO contract awarded by the Department of Health covers overseeing the project planning, procurement support, and implementation of the National IT Programme. The full value of the PMO contract over ten-years could be worth up to £117m.

KBR will provide project planning, risk analysis and management, cost modeling, procurement support, implementation and other programme support services.

National Design Authority

Duncan McNeil was formally announced as the head of the National Design Authority (NDA). He will be supported by NHS Information Authority veterans Dr Anthony Nowlan and Jeremy Thorp. The NDA will develop and control the standards to which future NHS IT systems will have to adhere to.

Mr McNeil is the founder and senior partner at ASE Consulting and has been providing IT and management consultancy to the private and public sectors for 20 years.

Speaking at Healthcare Computing Mr McNeil said of the Design Authority: “We are there to keep the vision and ensure designs comply with policy.”

Clinician Involvement

Professor Martin Severs from the University of Portsmouth has joined the National Programme as Director of Clinical Assurance – he will take the lead on developing and ensuring clinician involvement in the National Programme.

Professor Severs is currently the Chairman of the Information Standards Board (ISB), a role in which he will continue. He told the conference that in his first three weeks in post he had already reviewed levels of clinician involvement: “I found there extensive levels of involvement of clinicians at all levels of the programme.” He admitted that this finding had “quite surprised” him.

Planning Blight

There isn’t any – whatever you might have thought. Though Sir John Pattison, the Department of Health’s Director of Research Analysis and Information, conceded he had almost been half persuaded himself. Mr Granger, however, said analysis by the National Programme indicated that NHS spending on IT has remained consistent at about £850-900m a year.