BT starts to award contracts for ‘data spine’
- 11 December 2003
BT, which won two of the major contracts announced by the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) on 8 December, has been awarding sub-contracts to technology suppliers. The contracts have so far focused on suppliers to help BT deliver the NHS Care Records Service, or ‘data spine’, the national database of electronic patient records that will also provide the transactional messaging for other elements of the NHS IT programme. BT was awarded a £620m, 10-year contract to act as the national application service provider (NASP) for the data spine. Later the same day LogicaCMG announced that BT had awarded it a 10-year contract expected to be worth in excess of £100 million as a member of the BT-led NASP team, to help design, deliver and manage the national patient record database. On Wednesday, Sun Microsystems announced that it had also been awarded a 10 year contract by BT under the NPfIT. Sun will provide the software, primarily its Java system, services, computer systems and storage systems to enable the nationally accessible patient record database and transactional messaging service to be delivered. Other firms working with BT on the ‘data spine’ include Oracle and Mastek. Despite winning contracts worth £620m for the NHS Care Records Service, and £966m for the local service provider for London, BT will not see much revenue initially, with much of the payment tied to results. According to a Monday report by Reuters, Andy Green, chief executive of BT’s Global Services Division said: "We will probably book around £50m of revenues this year…and obviously it will be upwards of £150m next year and onwards."
