Privately-held, unconventional US healthcare application provider Epic looks set to sign its first contract with the NHS by the end of the month. It has beaten rivals Cerner and Allscripts to the high profile Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust joint electronic patient record procurement. The deal, thought to be worth around £10m, will see both trusts replace legacy iSOFT (CSC) patient administration systems.
Epic will be delighted to have secured a foothold in the NHS – like other US rivals it’s been eager to get a slice of the UK market as the erstwhile National Programme for IT in the NHS winds down. But we can’t help feeling a strange sense of déjà vu as another US player jumps enthusiastically into the NHS market. Although very successful in the US, Epic is new to the UK and relatively new to Europe, with just three reference sites in the Netherlands. It claims to have already ‘internationalised’ its software, but the language it’s been using suggests there is still some learning to be done about the peculiarities of the NHS. Moreover, like Cerner previously, its software suits a ‘rip and replace’ strategy and leaves little room for ‘best of breed’ software – is that an alarm bell ringing somewhere in the distance? That said, if anyone can make it work it might well be a company that holds meetings in a tree house and has Humpty Dumpty and the Tin Man welcome visitors – see this weekend’s Daily Mail for visual evidence!