Treasuary approval has been given for the procurement of acute systems under the Additional Supply Capability and Capacity framework, according to the Department of Health.
In 2009, the DH announced that hospital trusts in the South of England not covered by the contract with BT for systems under the National Programme for IT in the NHS would be offered a choice of centrally funded systems.
Three procurements using the ASCC framework – for community and child health, acute and ambulance systems – were put on ice last April, ahead of the UK general election.
In September, CfH said that the ASCC procurements would go ahead with procurements for child and community health systems. Procurements restarted at the end of last year and are now in evaluation stage.
The DH has now said that the remaining ASCC procurements are now ready to begin.
A spokesperson told eHealth Insider: “These include ambulance systems, helping trusts achieve improvements to urgent and acute care pathways, information systems for those acute trusts that have yet to receive care record systems under local service provider contracts, and integration to allow information to be shared across the NHS.”
The spokesperson added that the priority for acute information systems will be delivering on the ‘Clinical 5’ elements identified as central to the requirements of a strategic hospital IT system in the Operating Framework for the NHS in England two years ago.
These comprise patient administration systems that can integrate with other systems, order communications and diagnostics reporting, discharge letters with coding, scheduling for beds, tests and theatres, and e-prescribing.
However, EHI understands that there is some way to go before contracts for suppliers to implement the systems are signed off.
One trust IT director told EHI that the DH will be sending letters to trusts shortly to assess the demand for ASCC.
This apparently mirrors the exercise undertaken last spring to determine commitment to Lorenzo in the North, Midlands and East of England, which is due to be delivered by local service provider CSC if problems in deploying the system in four key sites can be overcome.
Once a trust has committed to ASCC, a period of ‘local requirement and solutions fit’ will begin, during which a system supplier will be determined by the health community and the DH.
EHI understands that individual contracts will then be set and signed off at board level and presented to the Treasury for final approval.
The DH added: "Final Treasury approval is expected at the point when we are ready to sign the contracts."
There are no timescales in place, but a number of sources say it is likely to be the end of the year before anything is signed off.
The IT director added: “I know that at least for the integration piece contracts are meant to be let by mid November; it could be longer for the other elements.”