National prison contract for TPP

The Department of Health has announced that TPP’s SystmOne Prison has been selected as the first national clinical IT system for prisons.

The decision, previewed in EHI Primary Care last month, means primary care trusts now have until the end of December 2010 to deploy the system across all prisons in England.

The DH said SystmOne has been procured under a contract with CSC, the local service provider for the North, Midlands and East, which has already installed SystmOne Prison in 57 prisons in the NME clusters.

A further eight prisons in the south are also already using SystmOne Prison following independent procurement by their primary care trusts.

The costs of providing the system to other prisons in London and the South will be met by the DH with PCTs expected to pick up the tab for project management, training and local IT support. The DH said funding arrangements were already in place in NME and that these would remain the same following the deal with CSC.

Richard Bradshaw, director of offender health at the DH, and Mark Read from the National Offender Management Service wrote to all NHS chief executives this week to announce the selection of SystmOne prison.

The letter said the deal would cover all public sector and contracted out prisons in England. Immigration centres are not in the scope of the programme but discussions are being held to extend the programme to Wales.

The letter adds: “The clinical II system will enable safer and more effective care to be delivered to offenders through the effective management and exchange of clinical information across prison healthcare.”

It said various options for the provision of the clinical system were considered and that following due diligence and commercial negotiations SystmOne Prison could now be confirmed as the preferred system.

EHI Primary Care revealed last month that SystmOne Prison was likely to be selected, subject to commercial discussions.

There are more than 135 prisons in England. The prison health IT programme aims to deliver a shared record within HM Prison Service.

Bradshaw and Read said the delivery of the first national clinical IT solution across the prison estate would be critical to the success of the forthcoming strategic delivery plan for health and criminal justice.

NHS Connecting for Health has a programme team in place to facilitate the roll-out and strategic health authorities and PCTs are expected to play a key role, in line with the National Local Ownership Programme.

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