Dedalus named latest supplier for Scotland ePMA framework

European health IT provider Dedalus has been named as a supplier on the NHS Scotland Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA) framework. 

The framework, valued at £15m, covers 14 regional health boards and two national hospitals, including the State Psychiatric Hospital in Carstairs and the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Glasgow.

Italy-headquartered Dedalus, which also has offices in the UK, was selected following an evaluation process in which prospective suppliers had to meet 1261 requirements, 462 being mandatory.

Dedalus provides electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) processes and facilitates pre-admission medicines history to discharge medications for inpatients, outpatients, across a variety of clinical roles and care locations.

The latest version of Dedalus’ ePMA system, Planner for Care (P4C) uses HTML5 and the latest FHIR standards, with support for Windows, iOS and Android operating systems.

The system comes with the NHS dm+d (dictionary of medicines and devices), which supports transfer of medicines information between clinical systems and cross-care settings.  It also features in-built Snomed-CT clinical coding.

NHS National Services Scotland issued a prior information notice for procurement of a national multi-supplier EPMA framework in 2015.

EMIS Group and JAC Computer Services were given “preferred bidder” status in August 2016.

Judy Smith, Managing Director at Dedalus Healthcare Ltd, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this accreditation across Scotland. Our acceptance as ‘Active Supplier’ ensures that we can bring the powerful, user-friendly capabilities of HEPMA to Scottish clinicians and we look forward to bidding on all upcoming mini-tenders.”

Meanwhile in England, the Department of Health and Social Care recently named the first 13 trusts that will receive funding to expand ePMA in the NHS.

A total of £78m will be made available to trusts that have struggled to move away from paper-based prescription processes, up until 2021.