CGI has won an ICT infrastructure services deal with the Central & North West London (CNWL) NHS Foundation trust, valued at c£60m over seven years. The services provided will support c5,200 end users ad 5,500 staff across 150 sites. CMWL “new and improved” ICT infrastructure and services is expected to be in place by the end of May 2015.
In the UK, though CGI has a presence in the healthcare sector, its presence has been weaker than in other areas of the UK public sector. However, we had been expecting the company to pursue slow and incremental growth. Indeed, CGI’s UK CEO Tim Gregory stated that he believed a combination of CGI’s North American and European IP (as used for the MoD Defence Medical Records contract) would make CGI one of the strongest providers in the UK market for electronic medical records (EMR) - see CGI's challenge: harnessing its local expertise globally. Though this contract doesn’t draw on CGI’s EMR experience, the Trust made clear that it was seeking a bidder who was aware of the continuing changes occurring both in technology and “within the NHS at large”, showing that CGI was able to demonstrate an acute understanding of the sector during the competition. The Trust also called for innovation in the use of technology and for the concept of innovation to equally apply to the financial aspects of the contract.
Also worthy of note is that the Trust may extend the ICT infrastructure services to cover “potential clinical or information systems, business applications, integration and portals or digital service user engagement, such as telehealth”. We expect to see more ICT outsourcing within the UK healthcare sector at a local level over our forecast period (see UK public sector SITS market trends & forecasts 2013).