When Allocate Software reported its half year results earlier this month (see here) CEO Ian Bowles talked tantalisingly of a major new multi-year contract for cloud services with a UK teaching hospital. Today it named the customer - Barts Health NHS Trust which is England's largest NHS Trust with over 15,000 staff. It will use Allocate’s HealthSuite, which includes HealthRoster and HealthMedics, to manage staff rotas across the whole trust, replacing paper records and spreadsheets with a single system. We can assume the deal size was significant, although as it is for cloud services most of the revenue will be recognised over the length of the contract.
It is an important strategic win for Allocate too, showcasing the value of an integrated system and the use of cloud services for critical functions, so no doubt other trusts will watch progress with interest. It is also a neat example of how to exploit data to optimise performance (e.g. providing visibility and control of nurse staffing levels in relation to patient acuity and dependency as well as overall patient numbers) and make smarter decisions, which is one of the themes we identified in our ESAS predictions for 2014.