BT wins five NHS contracts
BT has won contracts with five NHS organisations to develop
community-of-interest networks (CoINs). The contracts, with United
Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, North Merseyside Health Informatics
Service, Sussex Health Informatics Services, Peterborough and Stamford
Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Kent and Medway Health Informatics
Service, are together worth about £36m.
These are in addition to a similar contract BT was awarded last year
by the Essex NHS Strategic Health Authority (SHA).
The networks are expected to save the NHS money by combining voice,
video and data calls over the same network. They will take advantage of
N3, the broadband network BT is building for the NHS as part of the
National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
The Essex NHS SHA, which awarded its contract to BT last year, has
now completed its network.
Although N3 is nationally funded, NHS organisations may offer
additional services over the network if they are locally funded. These
include applications such as IP telephony and videoconferencing, as well
as more efficient ways of dealing with calls — an example might be the
capacity to pass calls between GPs or hospitals during busy periods to
ensure all calls are answered quickly and efficiently.
“Our new network has enabled the Trust to im-plement NHS Connecting
for Health digital xray systems (PACSs) in all Lincolnshire hospitals
successfully”, says Merrill Hayes, Programme Man-ager in United
Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust IM&T department. “This provides
significant financial and clinical benefits. Xrays can now be moved
between hospitals in seconds rather than days when film was used.”
Source: bjhc&im April 2007
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