The NHS University has cancelled the procurement for its ‘virtual campus’, the project that was meant to be the centerpiece of the health service’s corporate university e-learning services. NHSU had planned to award the contract for the ‘virtual campus’ this summer. The platform was intended to provide NHS staff with 24-hour access to online knowledge and learning resources. IBM and LogicaCMG had been shortlisted to deliver the project. The NHSU, which aims to develop the skills of the 1.2 m people working in the NHSr, hoped to award a contract this summer for the online virtual campus. Senior executives at NHSU have decided to terminate the original ‘virtual campus’ initiative and will instead procure an interim solution in the form a learner management system (LMS) to ‘support the management, support and tracking’ of students. The virtual campus was intended to form the cornerstone of the NHSU, providing learners and tutors with access to information and resources. NHSU was also planning to use the virtual campus as its spine for management, teaching, research, learner administration and support purposes. A spokesperson for NHSU told E-Health Insider that although the current procurement had been cancelled "NHSU is still fully committed to the development of a virtual campus". According to the NHSU the decision to terminate the current ‘virtual campus’ procurement was taken because “the planned NHSU initial registration system had limited learner management functionality – only ever being able to register but not track learners’ progress – and the full NHSU virtual campus was not going to be delivered in time to fill the gap." An interim registration system currently in use by NHSU was implemented earlier this year by BT, and provides student registration and basic learner tracking capabilities. NHSU’s plans call for it to support 100,000 learners in the financial year 2004/5. The LMS is urgently needed to support these students. The revised plan is to use the initial registration system in conjunction with the new LMS system. According to an NHSU statement: “The NHSU was always going to have an LMS. In the absence of the VC NHSU’s immediate need is for an LMS to support learning." NHSU insists that despite the decision to shelve the procurement for the virtual campus “the vision of having an NHSU virtual campus remains, as does NHSU’s commitment to use of technology to support and deliver learning."
