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University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust has chosen IBM to provide its Information Management & Technology (IM&T) services. The Trust has confirmed that it signed a contract with IBM just before Christmas which will see Big Blue select and potentially deliver new technology, including an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system, to Leicester’s Hospitals. IBM is partnered with NTT Data, which is providing the IT infrastructure and related support services. The procurement process began in November 2011 at which time the tender documents valued the deal at up to £600m over 15 years, however we understand that IBM's contract is in fact worth £60m.
The plan is to transition the management of IM&T services from the Trust to IBM over the next 18 months. IBM is tasked with managing existing IM&T systems and selecting and implementing the next generation of systems to transform the way the Hospitals work. According to Dr Kevin Harris, medical director at Leicester’s Hospitals, one of the first tasks is to create a clinical portal where doctors can access all of the information about their patients, from letters to results of diagnostic tests.
This is an important strategic win for IBM which has been quietly building up its UK healthcare business since 2009 when the National Programme for IT in the NHS began to crumble and it became clear that the market was opening up again (see IBM’s UK healthcare business: positioned for growth? if you’re a PublicSectorViews subscriber). Despite being active in the NHS market for more than 20 years, IBM currently derives a relatively low level of revenues from the sector and can only point to a handful of software and services clients, notably long-standing outsourcing customers Bath and the Wirral. Leicester is therefore a significant contract for IBM that will boost its position in our healthcare rankings and raise its profile in the sector.
