Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told the EHI Chief Clinical Information Officers Leaders Network last week that the bill for the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) will be cut by £1.8bn, with the savings reinvested in the NHS (for his speech see here). He confirmed that some £1bn of that will be ‘saved’ from CSC’s contract in the North, Midlands and East of the UK. The remainder of the savings, which have largely been previously announced, will come from the back office – i.e. cuts to the central running of the programme – and other NPfIT contracts.
But despite the fact that cuts are being made to central NPfIT spending, and budgets remain tight across the NHS, we are still seeing a good deal of SITS and BPS contract activity in the UK health sector. In today’s UKHotViewsExtra we take a closer look at a couple of recent examples – a £250m+ tender by nine London acute Trusts for a replacement to their NPfIT software and Serco’s £140m facilities management deal with East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust.