InterSystems ‘wins Scottish PMS deal’

E-Health Insider understands that InterSystems has won the contract to provide a national patient management system (PMS) to the NHS in Scotland.

Multiple sources have told EHI that InterSystems, with its TrakCare product, has won the contract after an 18 month procurement process.

The contract, which is worth £30m-£120m depending on which health boards join and which options are purchased, is to provide the core administrative functions of a PMS.

These functions include general hospital 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.

In April 2008, NHS National Services Scotland placed an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) for suppliers to come forward to bid for a patient management system framework contract.

More than 70 bids were received. NHS NSS eventually shortlisted Atos Orgin with System C’s Medway Sigma product, Perot with Oasis, and InterSystems with TrakCare at the beginning of 2009.

The whole procurement process involved more than 140 NHS staff from five health boards scoring each of the solutions.

When the agency was in the final stages, Mark Salveta, head of business advisory group at NHS NSS, told EHI: “We don’t underestimate the difficulty in replacing a frontline hospital system and we have had to rely heavily on the frontline staff in a number of different streams of work to specify, compare and test the functionality of the offered system.”

The contract was due to be announced in June 2009 but Salveta said the delay was ensure the right supplier was chosen.

“It became obvious to us in January that we wanted to be as thorough as we could in evaluating the products before making a final decision so we added a number of additional tasks.”

The decision was then pushed back to October 2009 and was finally made yesterday.

Five health boards that cover 50% of the Scottish population have already agreed to contract the successful solution.

Those health boards include NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Grampian, NHS Borders, NHS Ayrshire and Arran and NHS Lanarkshire. Northern Ireland is also able to call off its own contract.

The roll-out will commence at the beginning of 2010 and will last around two years. And further health boards that decide to contract InterSystems will roll-out in the subsequent two years.

Link: InterSystems

NHS National Services Scotland