In Focus Health Ltd has won the contract tender to supply South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust with its web-based clinical performance reporting and benchmarking system. InFocus Health will supply South Manchester with its HiPPO 21 system. Installation is due to begin immediately with the system due to be rolled out to 250 users across the trust. The system, which was procured following a European procurement through the Official Journal of the European Community (OJEC), is expected to go live at the beginning of March 2004. The value of the deal was not disclosed. According to InFocus Health the system will enable the trust to measure hospital performance indicators against key NHS targets and to benchmark its performance against other similar trusts by clinical indicator. Steve Maingot, acting director of infomatics at South Manchester NHS Trust says: “This product will enable the trust to monitor clinical data against national clinical indicators.” Mr Maingot added: “This is a huge step forward for monitoring performance within this trust and will hopefully provide us with a tool to measure improvements in clinical practice over the next two years.” InFocus Health says that it won the deal thanks to its competitive pricing and ability to offer a close fit to the trust’s operational requirement. These included the need to define and report on local indicators quickly and easily, ease of drill through to patient level and simple report customisation all provided by a simple to use web-based application. Commenting on the deal, InFocus Health director Dr David Beeson said “The focus of NHS IT activity this year has inevitably been on the NPfIT which makes us particularly pleased to add this latest contract win to our 2003 total of six. Dr Beeson added: “We are delighted that we now have South Manchester as clients and look forward to working in partnership with them in the coming months to deliver real benefits to a wide cross section of users.” In Focus Health was formed in December 2002 and brings together the skills, products and services, including benchmarking, of two companies with solid NHS credentials – Greville Campbell Ltd and InterNova Ltd. Over the past 12 years the two companies have worked with over 150 NHS organisations.
