Worcestershire NHS Trusts Set To Outsource IT

Worcestershire-based NHS organisations including Trusts and Clinical Commssioning Groups (CCGs) have chosen a supplier which it will outsource its IT services to for the next five years.  

Under the £18m contract, independent IT infrastructure services provider Computacenter will deliver a variety of services to Worcestershire health services, such as core IT infrastructure and remote and desk-side support. 

The organisations which are covered by the deal are Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust and three CCGs: Redditch and Bromsgrove, South Worcestershire and Wyre Forest.  

"Like any NHS organisation, we are being challenged to deliver more services with limited resources," explained Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust IT head Colin Innes. 

"By modernising our ICT services and systems we will be able to deliver better outcomes by achieving greater efficiencies," he claimed.  

Transformation Initiatives  

Alongside the priovision of IT support, Computacenter will also be delivering IT transformation initiatives in Worcestershire, such as enhanced connectivity for GP surgeries and unified communications for community and mental health workers.  

The firm is also working to prevent outages of clinical applications by transforming datacentre operations  for the involved organisations and consolidating the server and storage infrastructure.  

"The new shared ICT services contract will enable us to improve efficiency, patient safety and health outcomes by minimising ICT downtime and disruption for clinical and administrative staff," claimed ICT director for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust James Longmore.  

While shared services and outsourced IT are growing in popularity amongst the local government sector, the vast majority of NHS Trusts choose to manage their IT services in-house, although Worcestershire is not the first area to outsource healthcare IT.  

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