The Fujitsu Alliance has been awarded the final Local Service Provider (LSP) contract for the South of England to deliver the NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) under the National Programme for IT (NPfIT)in England. The contract for £896 million, due to run until 2013, was announced today by health secretary, John Reid. The Fujitsu Alliance, offering IDX as its main clinical application was picked ahead of rival bids from Sema/Cerner and PlexusCare – the alliance of EDS and LogicaCMG bidding iSOFT. The Southern region is the largest in England covering almost one quarter of England’s population and a geographical area from Dover to Land’s End and the Isle of Wight to Milton Keynes. As LSP, Fujitsu will provide local systems and services to access and use the NHS Care Records Service, provide IT support at a local level, deliver essential infrastructure and connect to existing systems in the NHS. Director General of NHS IT, Richard Granger said: "We are very pleased to have completed the procurement for the NHS CRS. Five out of the six contracts were awarded before Christmas 2003. It became clear that in the Southern cluster there was still scope for improvement around affordability and terms and conditions to bring the three offers available in line with those secured for the other clusters." "Our prudent approach in taking a little extra time to award the contract has been vindicated by the value for money position secured with the award of this contract. In all cases, the contracts have been awarded in full compliance with the procurement principles, which were published in January 2003." Granger added that the focus of the National Programme will now shift to delivery: "The Programme will now shift its focus to the ensuring delivery of high quality services to a challenging timetable."
