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BT’s ambitions to grow its healthcare business internationally have been bolstered by a contract win in Australia that will see it provide networked IT services to a new-build hospital in Perth as a subcontractor to Serco.
BT Global Services is the leading supplier to the UK healthcare software and IT services market thanks to its numerous high profile NHS IT contracts and it has long had the desire to build on this by doing more in the health sector internationally. David Wilson, who leads the healthcare business, told us earlier this year that it intends to focus its efforts on Asia Pac where BT as a whole has a stronger footprint. BTGS does have some experience in healthcare in Singapore (thanks to its acquisition of IT Services firm Frontline) and Australia (where it had a small contract with the National e-Health Transition Authority). But this deal will be a useful reference site in Australia and support growth in BT’s health practice in the country (set to reach 90 people in the next two years).
What’s striking is that this contract appears to be the sort of old fashioned comms deal that BT is very good at – providing a secure local area network, unified comms, mobility and conferencing technologies with just a passing mention of system integration services - it just happens to be in the health sector. BT’s chequered experience with the NHS’ National Programme for IT in England may have helped it get its foot in the door with Serco in Australia, but it seems to be its networking ‘knitting’ that won it a seat at the table. We’d be quite happy to see it stick to this knitting as it targets other healthcare contracts in the region.
