Six IT suppliers have agreed pricing structures for business with the NHS, the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) announced on Thursday. It said this could save the health service about £30m.
A NPfIT spokesperson told Government Computing News that the deals are centrally negotiated memorandums of understanding on pricing. They can be used by the Local Service Providers, which are implementing NPfIT on a regional level, or any other NHS organisations rather than purchasing separately at a higher price.
"The arrangements are a further example of how the National Programme for IT is gaining benefits for the taxpayer through aggregating NHS purchasing power," NPfIT said in a statement.
"Given its unparalleled size the National Programme is in a position to procure IT services from suppliers for the NHS on a greater scale and at a more competitive rate than any other single NHS organisation. The arrangements will obtain the best deals for the NHS and enable the highly cost-effective provision of infrastructure that will support the NHS by underpinning critical NHS IT systems."
The six deals are as follows:
- Cisco Systems will provide network equipment, such as data centre high speed switches, content switches and routers for the N3 broadband network. This will support the electronic transmission of NPfIT applications and visual data.
- EMC Computer Systems will supply storage technology to help meet the data management demands of the NHS Care Records Service. This includes hardware, software and services.
- Hewlett Packard will provide a range of ProLiant and NonStop server storage configurations and services to form the core of the data centres implemented by the prime contractors in each of the five LSP regions. These systems will handle the data covered by the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS).
- SeeBeyond will provide its Integrated Composite Application Network Suite to underpin the NCRS by providing the core integration software at the national level to perform the cross indexing of patient records. It will also supply the transaction messaging service to enable the movement of data between applications.
- Sun Microsystems will supply enterprise infrastructure software, server and storage hardware and related services. This includes infrastructure platform and managed services to underpin the NCRS being delivered by BT.
- TATA Consultancy Services (TCS), a member of the Fujitsu Alliance which has been awarded the LSP contract for the southern cluster, will now offer fixed rates for services related to the National Programme to any NHS organisation or subcontractor. This covers data migration, clinical application implementation and systems integration.
Commenting on the arrangements, Gordon Hextall, NPfIT's chief operating officer, said: "Innovative arrangements such as these are another example of the National Programme ensuring that the NHS gets the best value for the systems and services it procures; that help deliver significant benefits for patient and clinicians alike. The arrangements we have with these suppliers will help ensure a modernised NHS supported by quality IT systems for the benefit of all."
Negotiations are being conducted on further arrangements with a number of IT suppliers.
