UK health service has £1.5B to put toward Digital Workplace Solutions 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Reference: 1692878654
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/08/24/nhs_tech_deals/
- Source link:
Through its commercial purchasing organization, NHS Shared Business Services (SBS), the UK's public healthcare provider is looking to start conversations with suppliers as part of a pre-competition consultation to help shape the potentially lucrative arrangement for common workplace hardware and software.
According to a [1]tender notice published by SBS, a joint venture between French outsourcing firm Sopra Steria and NHS England, the new deal is set to replace the [2]existing Digital Workplace Solutions deal before it expires on August 9, 2024.
[3]
The existing deal covers client devices, client access licenses for software, servers, desktop operating systems, virtualization platforms, and third-party software including commercial off-the-shelf and bespoke. Suppliers providing the current deal, which started in 2020, include resellers Softcat, Boxxe, and Computacenter as well as direct suppliers like Dell.
[4]Barts NHS hack leaves folks on tenterhooks over extortion
[5]Mega-data platform worth half a billion will suck in info from family doctors
[6]Palantir's deals with NHS England top £60M – without competition
[7]Individual data platforms for all health providers under controversial NHS plans
Framework deals were developed by the UK government to consolidate demand among a select group of suppliers which are expected to offer lower than usual prices given the indicative value of the deal. Buyers might come anywhere in the wider public sector and are not bound to spend the maximum value on the agreement.
The new NHS agreement, Digital Workplace Solutions 2, is set to include infrastructure equipment supply, infrastructure support and maintenance and fixed and mobile communication equipment, as well as replacing the existing deal.
[8]
Suppliers need to express an interest in attending a series of pre-competition events by September 19, while the formal competition is set to kick off with the contract announcement on January 25.
The NHS is trying to recover from the unprecedented demand created by the pandemic, together with limits to its budget. Earlier this year it said it would employ the [9]"latest technologies" to tackle the 6 million-strong waiting list for non-emergency care. As well as a revamp of workplace technologies, it has [10]committed £2 billion to implementing electronic health records across all its organizations and creating unified health records. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/5d8ea705-8e93-4be8-b4a4-569b9d34c24c
[2] https://www.sbs.nhs.uk/article/16433/Digital-Workplace-Solutions
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZOd@omaVQCMDVQoSxcdIjgAAA8c&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/11/barts_blackcat_theft/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/nhs_data_platform/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/20/palantir_nhs_england_deal/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/nhs_data_platforms/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZOd@omaVQCMDVQoSxcdIjgAAA8c&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/nhs_tech_consultancy_procurement/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/30/uk_electronic_health_records/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
FTFY.
"The NHS is trying to recover from the demand created by unnecessarily shutting everything down in response to the pandemic."
They could have carried on with regular care, instead of shutting almost everything down and making it a National Covid Service. This was entirely predictable, and in fact was predicted by many of us.
When I saw the headline I read the capital B as a figure 8 and thought 'the NHS has £1.58 to put towards...' and thought 'Christ, the Tories have screwed us over even worse than I thought'.
Solutions!
"The NHS is trying to recover from the unprecedented demand created by the pandemic, together with limits to its budget."
So spend the money on tech? Not medical tech, not operators of medical tech, not doctors, not nurses, not offloading of bed blockers (not necessarily the patients fault either), not ripping up the inefficiency for dealing with patients or breaking apart fiefdoms.
And as someone mentioned above not borking the 'health service' for covidpanic would have relieved the problem before it began. But we got more tiktoks so the pay bump was deserved. The NHS can have a slow clap
"together with limits to its budget"
Limits to its budget ?
For an organization that has been pissing money away for nothing since at least ten years, it's budget is obviously not limited enough.
If they had less money to fool around with, they'd have to do something actually productive with what they had.
Then they could build on it bit by bit, instead of having all these massive ideas that end up going nowhere and costing everything.