NHS England awards £1.6m deal to build digital staff 'passports' in fight against coronavirus second wave
- Reference: 1601460072
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/30/nhs_england_awards_16m_deal/
- Source link:
With daily cases rising to 7,143 yesterday - leapfrogging the previous UK record by 269 people, reported days ago - and the reproduction or [1]R number between 1.2 and 1.5 , indicating an exponentially rising number of cases, Great Britain looks set for a winter of discontent.
In response, [2]a tender notice has appeared announcing the contract award to build software to help NHS staff be redeployed across the organisation without the hindrance of bureaucracy.
Under established NHS rules, nurses, doctors and other staff have to repeat employment checks and to attend inductions despite remaining within the NHS. In March, NHS England announced it would roll out a temporary digital "passport" to enable staff to move between organisations more easily during the pandemic. It is unclear how many staff these temporary passports reached.
In August, NHS England said digital passports, which were set to store employment information on workers' phones, had been piloted across the country and were being rolled out "to support the COVID-19 response".
Commissioning within the health service, NHS England has now awarded Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust the £1.6m contract to build COVID-19 digital staff passports and the necessary infrastructure.
According to the tender notice, the trust would develop the staff passport "website, onboarding process for users, [and] relevant system integrations". It would also deploy the solution to up to 225 trusts, support it and manage cloud hosting.
It is unclear whether the trust would also develop the smartphone software for the solution.
NHS England awarded the contract for computer-related management services and management consultancy services without competition or prior publication. "In view of the extreme urgency, NHS England did not have time to conduct a procurement procedure in accordance with the timescales set out in the Public Contracts Regulations," the tender notice said.
NHS England is yet to respond to The Register 's request for comment. ®
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[1] https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-r-number-rises-again-across-uk-to-between-1-2-and-1-5-12081330
[2] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:457606-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
NHS England has left it until late September...
They really should be back in school.
Re: NHS England has left it until late September...
Perhaps they will use the £1.6m to make a living playing pool.
"In view of the extreme urgency"
The NHS might have done good to pay attention to the issue in March of this year.
Because the problem was pretty much obvious back then.
Re: "In view of the extreme urgency"
Maybe they had other things on their mind....
The envy of the world, it is.
It used to be, until successive governments (of all political leanings) chronically underfunded it, and sold off or dismantled parts of it.
Confused. Surely this already exists
https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-identity
Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed
What could possibly go wrong ???
Re: Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed
At least it's not Crapita
Mobile Phones
It looks like this requires the staff to download software on their private phones for a work reason.
I have the same issue at work, they want us to use lastpass but the ONLY way requires that i download an app to my Private phone (I have no work phone)
If they want to provide me with a works phone then i will use that to download the app but why should I use my PRIVATE phone for work?
After all, I do not always remember to carry my phone around with me!
Anyway not everyone has a mobile phone and even if they do does not mean they are running a compatable OS (Android/IOS) seems to be the only options, but windows mobile etc.
Under established NHS rules, nurses, doctors and other staff have to repeat employment checks and to attend inductions despite remaining within the NHS
Sounds like bureaucracy they could do with bypassing anyway!
(cancel passport if leaving 'under a cloud')