CSC announces merger with offshoot of HP

CSC will merge with HP Enterprise Services, the two US-based technology companies have announced.

HP Enterprise is a corporate IT solutions company that split off last year from HP; leaving the other half of the company to focus on making PCs and printers.

It announced on Tuesday that it would spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with CSC, in what its chief executive, Helen Whitman, described as a ‘spin-merger’ that was part of wider consolidation in the IT industry.

The implications for the two companies’ UK arms is unclear, but both have provided technology to NHS trusts around the country.

In response to queries from Digital Health News, a CSC UK spokesperson said there were no changes to CSC’s contractual commitments and “it is business as usual.”

However, he said the new company would have “more offerings, solutions and capabilities for all clients”; although how these will be offered to the healthcare IT market “has yet to be determined.”

In a statement following the announcement in an investor call on HP Enterprise’s latest figures, the US arm of CSC said the merger will “create a new company with substantial scale to serve clients more efficiently and effectively worldwide”.

Mike Lawrie, CSC president, chairman and chief executive, said the merger would create a “more powerful and versatile global technology services business”, including its healthcare business.

The Digital Health Intelligence database shows that HP Enterprise services provides technology to at least 11 NHS trusts.

Its highest profile contract was with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, for which HP provided infrastructure and hardware for the eHospital programme that also saw it implement the Epic electronic patient record.

CSC provides IT services to at least 171 NHS organisations. Many of these are a legacy of becoming the local service provider for the North, Midlands and East of England as part of the NHS National Programme for IT.

CSC was contracted to deliver Lorenzo, developed by iSoft, which it later bought, across the regions; but the system ran into significant development and deployment delays.

While a handful of trusts forged ahead with the Lorenzo system, many others ended up with “interim” systems, using older iSoft patient administration and clinical systems.

These contracts are due to expire in July and the Health and Social Care Information Centre has been monitoring trust readiness for the end of these contracts.

The latest figures indicate that just 15 system deployments are at risk of missing the deadline, and that the vast majority of trusts will stick with CSC as their clinical systems provider.

In addition, Digital Health News reported last year that 11 trusts in the NME have received central funding from the Department of Health to deploy Lorenzo, as part of a deal with the company to draw a line under NPfIT but make the system available to NME trusts that wanted it.

CSC has also won business outside the NME, with Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust in April that it is due to go live with Lorenzo in October this year.