EDS has pulled out of the bidding for the N3 contract to provide the NHS with a new broadband network that will underpin the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) project to modernise NHS IT systems. The N3 network will be vital to the success of the central electronic patient record, the NHS Care Records Service, and electronic transactions such as e-booking and electronic transfers of prescriptions based around a central ‘data spine’. EDS’s decision leaves only BT and Cable & Wireless left in the competition for a contract that is intended to provide the broadband capacity essential to the success of the NHS IT modernisation programme. BT and Cable and Wireless currently jointly provide the NHS’s existing data network NHSnet. According to a report in today’s Financial Times the US-based IT group’s decision follows a late move by Richard Granger, the NHS IT director general, to include voice as well as data transmission in the N3 contract, likely to be worth around £100 million a year and which could run for up to seven years. A source close to the programme told E-Health Insider that EDS’s decision to withdraw from the procurement had come as a surprise and caused a degree consternation. The FT report suggests that EDS pulled out of bidding because it does not see itself as a telecoms company, lacking the skills to add telephony to the pure data transmission the original specification involved. The decision means that EDS, once seen as a front runner to win NPfIT contracts, has won none of the £5.8 billion-worth of NHS contracts that have been let by the NPfIT in recent months. The FT states that EDS has invested over £3 million in bidding for NPfIT contracts.
